Review: DEATH BY BEAUTY, Gabrielle Lord

• Hachette Australia
  
• ISBN 9780733627309
• $32.99
• Paperback - C Format
• September 2012
• 400 pages

Synopsis (Publisher)

Australia's queen of crime fiction, Gabrielle Lord, is back with a chilling new novel. A 'vampire' is stalking the streets, attacking beautiful young women; some are murdered days later, others aren't touched again. Gemma Lincoln, PI, begins to see a pattern - but can she convince the authorities to take action before another life is lost?

How far would you go to look young and beautiful?
A young woman is attacked, she claims, by a vampire . Two more are found dead and hideously disfigured. A journalist goes missing after visiting Sapphire Springs Spa. And it's up to Gemma Lincoln, PI, to find out what is going on.

In her first week back on the job after maternity leave, finding a balance between investigating brutal crimes, caring for baby Rafi and making time for herself and Mike is all too much. Something has to give, but not while a third woman s life is in danger.

As she moves closer to tying the crimes together, Rafi disappears. Facing a mother's worst nightmare, Gemma discovers what she is prepared to do to save her son.

My Take

Other Australian female authors in the past, Kerry Greenwood and Jennifer Rowe to name a couple, have set their murder mysteries around a beauty farm. So what Gabrielle Lord is doing in a sense is giving it a modern take - treatments implementing DNA and modern surgery techniques.

Add too a couple of extra elements - beautiful girls being drugged by a vampire - their memories ensuring no-one will believe them, thinking they are drug-induced; and a young woman returning to work with a young child to care for.

Gemma Lincoln has this idea that she will be able to slowly re-immerse herself in her investigative work, but the nature of her job, and Gemma's own character, ensure that a slow resumption is just not an option. Young mothers reading DEATH BY BEAUTY will find themselves wishing that they had all the backup resources that Gemma has. Add to that the fact that Gemma is living with a man who is not the baby's father, and things become complicated.

Gabrielle Lord has been occupying her time with writing YA thrillers and this is the first Gemma Lincoln novel for 5 years. It shows that Lord has not lost the touch and kept up with the times. I didn't like Gemma Lincoln any the more for it - but that is probably just the way she strikes me.

The story is a chilling one about how much money there is in the industry of helping women retain their beauty and even making them look 10 years younger.

My rating: 4.4

I've reviewed
BABY DID A BAD BAD THING
DEATH DELIGHTS (Jack McCain)
DIRTY WEEKEND (Jack McCain)

Gemma Lincoln series (Fantastic Fiction)
1. Feeding the Demons (1999)
2. Baby Did a Bad Thing (2002)
3. Spiking the Girl (2004)
4. Shattered (2007)
5. Death By Beauty (2012)