Crimes of Fashion: Killer Clutch

In-between jobs, New York City fashion psychologist Lauren Elliott accepts short term work for her best friend Charlotte Gauthier's new boss, neurotic and high strung Virgil St-James, the successful head designer at Lavigne, a Paris fashion house, in the lead up to the debut of Virgil's latest collection at Paris Fashion Week. Her accepting the job is despite the comfort she finds only in her hometown of New York City, and not speaking French. Immediately at the end of Virgil's show, the murdered dead body of someone key at Lavigne is discovered backstage. The murder investigation is led by Inspector Andre Dubreuil of the municipal police. From initial evidence, he takes Charlotte into custody as the key suspect, who he can hold without charge up to forty-eight hours, which doesn't sit well with Lauren who will do anything to help her friend. Lauren doesn't understand Andre's haste in many people having seen to have had words or known to have had issue with the victim prior to the murder, Charlotte not among them. But Andre, in allowing Lauren access to the investigation, does recognize her invaluable assistance not only being a psychologist but being the daughter of a retired police detective, although the two do continue to butt heads in Andre's need to be by the books for reasons personal to him while Lauren will bend the rules whenever required in that aid to Charlotte. Lauren may not realize the danger she places herself in the closer she gets to discovering the identity of the murderer.—Huggo