When I read the blurb for Virginia Brown’s Deadly Design, I was instantly drawn to the colorful, madcap description of her characters. Both they and the wild situations reminded me of the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich. Since those books are a favorite of mine I’m always looking for new authors of this type of mystery. There aren’t many authors that can balance comedy and suspense so that one genre doesn’t overpower the other. So I knew I had to give Ms. Brown’s book a try.

Darcy Fontaine is in trouble. When she suspects Harry Gordon, her business partner, of smuggling illegal imports, maybe even drugs, using the interior design shop, she knows she is in trouble. What can she do? Who can she go to? She can’t go to the police because in the upper class society of Memphis any hint of scandal will kill her business. She knows of only one person she can turn to, someone who can’t say no because they are family.

Harley is still feeling the effects of her last little excursion into mayhem. She’s not really excited about the idea of investigating her aunt’s claims that someone is using the shop to cover-up illegal imports but her aunt is desperate. Harley reluctantly agrees because she is family, even though she’s a snob and, of course, the promise of five thousand dollars helps.

They agree to meet at the shop on the day a new shipment is due to arrive but before Harley can do any real searching, Harry comes back early from a business trip. Once again Harley tries to convince Darcy that the best thing would be to go to the police. When Darcy refuses Harley agrees to do an after hours search of the shop. That night Harley lets herself into the shop where she meets trouble. The alarm isn’t set; she hears what sound like gunshots; her aunt’s car speeds out of the parking lot and a very dead Harry Gordon is found impaled on a set of elk horns.

As the plot thickens Bobby Baroni, her childhood friend and Mike Morgan, her new love interest, both cops with the Memphis police department, try their best to keep Harley out of trouble and out of the case. Harley, on the other hand, is determined to keep her aunt out of jail. With the reluctant help of family and friends, can she find the real murderer before someone else winds up dead? Was smuggling the real reason Harry was killed or was there some other secret motive?

Virginia Brown’s Deadly Design isn’t one of those intense, can’t turn out the lights kind of mystery. It is a light-hearted mystery with lots of screwball characters; laugh out loud situations, with a couple of dead people thrown in. When I started Ms. Brown’s book I was hoping for a new author who could walk the fine line between humor and mystery and I was not disappointed. I found that Deadly Design was easy to read with its sense of humor along with being a well-written mystery that had me, along with its lead character Harley Jean, asking “Who dun it?” underneath all that fun. This is a book that I’m going to recommend to my friends who enjoy the funnier side of a good mystery.
 
 
Reviewed By Theresa Rhodes
© February 2006