Book Review: Death by Inferior Design

Reviewed By: Pat Reid - RAM

Death by Inferior Design     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Leslie Caine
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Woman Main Character   Cozy
Series: Domestic Bliss Mysteries # 1
Bantam Dell, 2004, 372 pps.

Erin Gilbert is an interior designer in Colorado. She accepts a job from a Carl Henderson to redecorate his wife’s bedroom while his wife is out of town. When she arrives she finds that Steve Sullivan, another interior designer and her rival, had already arrived. She soon finds that Steve has been hired to redecorate a room in another house on the same street while the wife is out of town with Ms. Henderson. She soon finds out that the redecorating of the rooms is set up to be a contest between the two decorators with the winner getting a full page spread in Denver Lifestyles.

While working on the bedroom she is to redecorate Erin finds some letters and a picture hidden in the wall. The picture is a picture she is very familiar with because it is a picture of Erin that matched one her mother had of her when she was small. Erin is adopted and although her mother is deceased she had made Erin promise she would never try to find her birth parents. She wonders now if she can keep that promise.

Soon even stranger things begin happening. Erin realizes that there is a killer in the neighborhood and somehow it is connected to her.

The interactions between Gilbert & Sullivan, the excitement in the neighborhood and Erin’s quirky landlady make for an entertaining book. With Erin’s descriptions you might want to start redecorating.

Pat Reid - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Pat Reid - RAM