Beauty Dies — Melodie Johnson Howe

Even High Fashion Has Its Low Points. Elegant, enigmatic private eye Claire Conrad and her very independent assistant Maggie Hill - a dynamic female duo as different as mismatched earrings, are about to fly to Los Angeles when a young woman appears at their swank New York hotel with a message. 'Cybella didn't kill herself,' she says, referring to the legendary fashion model whose recent death was judged a suicide. Minutes later the young woman collapses and dies in front of the hotel. She certainly didn't kill herself; she was stabbed to death.
Clearly the Big Apple is no less deadly than the City of Angels. Maggie and Claire decide to stick around, and before the novel's through, their search leads them from the low-rent life of Times Square's seediest peep shows to the chic halls of Bonton magazine. These are both worlds of hut, of exploitation and abandonment, and in one or both of them hides a killer.