Shot Through Velvet - Byerrum, Ellen

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Résumé :
The body was blue.Not merely wearing blue, he was blue-and not the blue pallor of death. He was sapphire from head to toe, a deep shade of mood indigo.
The last velvet factory in Virginia is shutting down for good, killing off many jobs and a dying small town. Fashion reporter Lacey Smithsonian is there to cover its sad last day on the job. But with her own job in danger and her newspaper in deep financial trouble, this story hits a little too close to home. And the centerpiece of Lacey's factory tour? A dead body found spooled in the velvet, the manager everyone hated: the Blue Devil in a vat of blue dye.
Motives, suspects and rumors run riot as murder follows murder. Is this a killer on a purely personal vendetta, or a mysterious Velvet Avenger bent on revenge for the velvet workers' shuttered factory and lost jobs? The murderer's calling card is chillingly clear: a blue velvet ribbon. Is the killer just using Lacey for publicity-or is she too on the Avenger's list? As the killer strikes ever nearer, Lacey finds she has much more at stake in this story than just her job.

Biographie:
MYSTERY AND THRILLER writer Ellen Byerrum is a former journalist in Washington, D.C., as well as a produced and published playwright. She tries not to repeat herself in her writing and in pursuit of research. She received her private investigator's registration in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Her latest book, The Brief Luminous Flight of the Firefly, is the 1940s prequel to her Crime of Fashion Mysteries, and features a very young Mimi Smith, the Great-aunt Mimi mentioned throughout the series. Firefly takes place during WWII in Washington, D.C. Byerrum's screwball noir Crime of Fashion Mysteries feature D.C. fashion reporter Lacey Smithsonian, whose talent for solving crimes with fashion clues leads her to bodies dyed blue, haunted shawls, and the lost jewel-filled corset of a Romanov princess. Two of her books, Killer Hair and Hostile Makeover, were filmed for Lifetime television. Stretching beyond the mystery form, Byerrum has written a stand-alone psychological thriller, The Woman in the Dollhouse, which Best Thrillers says, bewitches on page one and continues to mesmerize until its shocking conclusion. She has also penned a middle grade mystery, The Children Didn't See Anything. More recently, she published a children's rhyming picture book, Sherlocktopus Holmes: Eight Arms of the Law. In addition to her novels and stories, two of her plays (under the pen name Eliot Byerrum) have been published by Samuel French, Inc., and are available through Concord Theatricals. Her website is at www.ellenbyerrum.com. Readers can follow her online at www.facebook.com/EllenByerrum.