Author: Bonnie Hearne Hill Title: Killer Body Genre: mystery
Being an investigative reporter apparently has its small advantages, chief among which is getting to choose your stories. That's lucky for Rikki Fitzpatrick, because her latest assignment isn't from her editor: it's from her aunt. Rikki's twenty-something cousin, Lisa, though seemingly in excellent health, simply keeled over from a heart attack just days before her wedding. Aunt Carey's pretty sure that her death is somehow linked to the chain of weight-loss and exercise studios Lisa had been frequenting of late, Killer Body. Lucky for Rikki, she has an angle on which she can hang a story: Julie Larimore, the sole spokesmodel for the chain, has gone missing. Before the body's even cool - heck, before there even is a body - studio founder Bobby W is in the hunt for someone to replace (he says, "enhance") the missing Julie. It's Julie's image that defines the chain, even down to the red silhouette of her leggy form on the logo. Filling her stiletto pumps is going to be a tall order.
The leading candidates all have their histories. Texas-born Princess Gabrielle Pacquette (whom Rikki dubs the Perfect Fit) is undergoing a most public divorce from Prince Alain; small-screen star Rochelle MacArthur (the Near Fit) is fading fast in an industry where youth is second only to beauty; and Tania Marie "the Honey Bee" Camp (the Misfit) is on the rebound from a scandalous affair with America's most trusted anchorman. All three also suffer from secret eating disorders - one's favorite snack is Wendy's French fries dipped in a frosty topped with Bailey's Irish Cream. Yuck: whatever happened to ketchup?
Rikki's not the least bit interested in finding Julie - she just wants to know why Cousin Lisa died - but when all three candidates begin to get threats against them and their families, she decides it's time to look into Julie's disappearance. That's when the fun begins. The trail leads to the dark side of eating disorders, where drugs and chemicals compete with the binge/purge cycle for popularity, and Rikki learns just what some people will do to get that Killer Body.
Yawn...
If the entirety of Killer Body were as fast-paced and interesting as the last chapter, it would have the potential for a heck of a ride. For that matter, if anything in the first 95% of the book were remotely interesting, I'd heartily recommend it. But the sad fact is that author Bonnie Hearne Hill does little more than write an extended chat about eating disorders. There's little or no action, just three women constantly looking at themselves in the mirror and complaining about their huge (insert fleshy body part). We end up knowing of the three women very little other than what they consider their greatest fault and their rivals' greatest assets, what food group each gorges on when stressed, and the personal horror of each one's all-too-public disgrace.
Protagonist Rikki is a bundle of insecurities herself, from her failed relationship with her cousin to her failed relationship with her boss to her tentative flirting with one of the Killer Body executives, Lucas. Whether or not she's a good reporter, who knows...
Parting Shots
In her second novel - the first was 2004's Intern ("loosely" based on the Gary Condit scandal) - Hill apparently opts to put some old research on eating disorders to good use. Though the topic can often have its interesting moments, the book generally doesn't. Hill fails to even remember that there's a supposed to be mystery for the first three-quarters of the book, leaving the final showdown and revelations of sins past feeling decidedly like an afterthought, a snippet of detective novel tacked onto a chick-lit treatise on how "real women have curves."