First published 2017
Hillary Whitney's body is discovered in a sealed conference room at RAGE Fashion Book, where she worked as a fashion editor. The medical examiner attributes her death to the extreme pressures of maintaining an impossibly thin figure in the fashion world. Two months pass quietly until a mysterious handwritten note surfaces at NYPD headquarters, forcing Detective Mark Hutton to reopen the case. His investigation leads him directly to Catherine Ono, a driven editor at RAGE who refuses to stay on the sidelines. Cat teams up with her coworker Bess Bonner to conduct their own amateur investigation while Detective Hutton pursues official channels. Their world pulses with party girls, ambitious narcissists, and wealthy socialites who seem more dead than alive. As Cat and Bess dig deeper into Hillary's final days, they uncover a dangerous network involving illegal substances, sexual manipulation, elaborate deceptions, and expensive beauty products. Their inexperience as detectives proves costly when their investigation spirals beyond their control, trapping both women in circumstances that will permanently alter their lives.
Genres: mystery, crime, contemporary, thriller
Vibes: dark, fast-paced, suspenseful
Tropes: amateur-detective, investigation, unreliable-narrator
Setting: NYPD, RAGE Fashion Book
Period: 2 Months
336 pages · Hardcover · Grand Central Publishing
Content warnings: drug-use, sexual-content