Review: Death by Diamonds by Annette Blair

First line: As I drove to work that morning, I remembered the dream I’d had last night: Me as a toddle being passed between my mother and Aunt Fiona, the two of them dancing and chanting in rhyme beside the Mystic River beneath a full and magical moon.

From the back cover: Madeira loves her Vintage Magic boutique, but the visions she gets from the garments can be hard to handle, especially when she knows the garments’ owner. At first she’s thrilled to receive a package containing the beautifully bejeweled dress she designed for actress and old friend Dominique Delong while in fashion school. But the dress comes with a disturbing note from Dominique, who it seems took her last bow under very mysterious circumstances. Now Maddie needs to use her second sight to shine a spotlight on the actress’s entire entourage – including a bitter ex, a rival ingenue, and a very catty “best friend” – and make sure that this was the killer’s final act.

My thoughts: This is the third book in Annette Blair’s Vintage Magic Mystery series and it was a fun, quick read. Despite the fact that I do not usually care for the paranormal, in this case, it works. Madeira’s psychic gift of “reading” clothes while wearing or touching them adds a unique touch to the storyline as does the appearance of the resident ghost, Dante, who lives in Mad’s vintage shop.

In Death by Diamonds,  Mad ends up in New York for much of the novel in an attempt to solve her old friend Dominique’s death. There, she uncovers plenty of murder suspects: Dom’s current understudy; Dom’s ex-husband, who may well inherit the business they jointly own; a jealous rival; Dom’s personal chef, who wanted her to set him up in his own restaurant; Dom’s toy boy; and just about anyone who knew about the missing diamonds Dom wore on stage. Along for the ride to NY are her best friend, Eve; her on-again-off-again steamy love interest FBI agent Nick Jaconetti; and Detective Lytton Werner, the local sheriff who Mad has a sort of love-hate relationship with.

The descriptions of the vintage fashions and the fashion quotes that precede each chapter are probably my favorite part of this series. And now that we seem to have a love triangle going on between Mad, Werner and Nick, especially after the “thermonuclear kiss,” I am eager to get my hands on the next book in the series, Skirting the Grave, to see how it plays out.

(I purchased this book.)