Slain in Schiaparelli

Vintage Clothing Mysteries #3

by Angela M. Sanders

In this third book of the Joanna Hayworth Vintage Clothing mystery series, Joanna lands the dream assignment of dressing a bride for her celebrity wedding at a remote mountain lodge. The bridal gown is the rare and disturbing Tears dress from Schiaparelli’s 1938 circus collection. Add one monstrous snowstorm, a mother who can’t stop reliving her Studio 54 days, a New Age minister with a mysterious past, a temperamental young chef—and a growing number of corpses—and Joanna’s dream soon becomes a nightmare. Slain in Schiaparelli adds a witty, contemporary twist to the classic country manor mystery.

Genres: Mystery, Cozy Mystery, Cozy

273 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 23, 2015

About the author

Angela M. Sanders is the author of the Witch Way Librarian cozy mysteries and the Joanna Hayworth vintage clothing mysteries . As Clover Tate, she wrote the Kite Shop cozy mysteries.

Before turning author, spent more than a decade as a congressional investigator and also wrote magazine articles on perfume, food, and local personalities. When Angela isn’t at her laptop, she’s often rummaging in thrift shops, lounging with a vintage crime novel with her shelter cats Squeaky and Bitsy.

Sign up for her newsletter at www.angelamsanders.com and follow her on Instagram at @angela.m.sanders

Reviews

[Cynthia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing, as a stand alone and especially as part of the series. Barely anything or even the main character is recognizable from the series. And I hate how the author advanced the character's relationship with her boyfriend, from the last book merely by a couple of sentences. That should of happened over the span of an entire book. What a let down.

[Hilary (A Wytch's Book Review) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phew! Fashion meets Agatha Christie in a snow bound lodge. Joanna Hayworth has travelled to Redd Lodge with a priceless Schiaparelli gown for a bride to be to wear. When she arrives she discovers the reason for the odd choice of gown as the whole lodge is a testament to the Surrealist movement, she is expecting to be there for about two days in total (arrival day, day of the wedding, leaving day) but after the first evening they find themselves snowed in, but also find the groom dead from eating clam paste. That would be bad enough (obviously a tragic accident) but then there is a full blown murder and the group has no idea who the killer is, and will there be another victim? Until the snow storm stops will they be re-enacting "And Then There Were None"?

[Katie Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fashionable Fracas

This is the third book in the Vintage Clothing Mysteries series I’ve read. Very entertaining, and it kept me guessing right up to the end. While this isn’t my favorite, it was a satisfying mystery with an atmospheric setting. On to the next!

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most excellent recreation of a 1940s locked room mystery, complete with sketches of the lodge floor plans, with each room labeled. Coupled with well-drawn characters, secret rooms and a ghost, this is a very satisfying read. While it is the third in an enjoyable series, it can stand on its own IMO. Highly recommended for fans of Golden Age mysteries.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kept turning the pages, but it felt too formulaic to me or was trying too hard to be clever. Some clever touches, but I figured it out about 1/2 way through

[Julia Alberino · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good quick read from this reliable author. This one kept me guessing until almost the very end, which is all I can ask from a mystery novel.

[Bonnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joanna takes a vintage Schiaparelli dress to a rock star’s weeding in a surrealist lodge. Then there’s a snow storm isolating everyone. And then the murders start…..

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed my first venture into Angela M. Sanders's novel Slain in Schiaparelli, the third in her vintage clothing series starring protagonist Joanna Hayworth. Joanna is a very feet-on-the-ground person. In this novel, she has rented a priceless Schiaparelli "Tears" gown for a client's wedding, to be held in a remote lodge in the Oregon Cascades.

It is January, and once the wedding party is ensconced in the lodge, a blizzard hits, effectively cutting them off from the rest of the world. It's a creepy place, filled with surrealist artifacts. The wedding party isn't much better--some odder than others, and one downright obnoxious.

After the first night, the bridegroom, an aging rock star, is found dead in his room, thought to have had an allergic reaction to something on his late-night roast beef sandwich. Joanna is unsettled by the death. It's just too weird. So is the "holy" man who was to officiate the wedding. But really, looking around the room, what does she know about any of them? By the time a second body is found, it's clear that the first death was no accident.

It's a clever and fun read, a cozy. And the author herself is a wonderful woman with experience both in investigations and in the vintage clothing business. Kudos Angela!

[Yvette Jett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was incredibly strange and had zero relation to the rest of the series. That being said, I think I liked it better than the first two in the series because it was so unrepentantly weird. Joanna has been conscripted into delivering a Schiaparelli dress to a wedding; the dress is on loan from a museum, and it's never clear how or why Joanna was even involved in this transaction. But whatever. It's just an excuse to drop our protagonist into a secluded surrealist themed hotel (I would love to stay in a surrealist themed hotel -does that exist anywhere?) and then trap her there while murders start happening left and right. It is such an old school murder mystery premise that I had to love it; it really did smack of Agatha Christie or even The Shining. The characters were stock stereotypes and not a single person in this book did anything even remotely resembling a thing an actual human being might do in this situation. But it was a fun read, a brain dead read, but fun.

[Tammy Wooding]

Can she skirt death?

In this third book of the Joanna Hayworth Vintage Clothing mystery series, Joanna lands the dream assignment of dressing a bride for her celebrity wedding at a remote mountain lodge. The bridal gown is the rare and disturbing Tears dress from Schiaparelli’s 1938 circus collection. Add one monstrous snowstorm, a mother who can’t stop reliving her Studio 54 days, a New Age minister with a mysterious past, a temperamental young chef—and a growing number of corpses—and Joanna’s dream soon becomes a nightmare. “Slain in Schiaparelli” adds a witty, contemporary twist to the classic country manor mystery.

[Charlyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joanna travels to a remote mountain lodge to take a vintage dress, a Tears dress from Schiaparelli, to a rock star's bride. Very quickly the wedding party gets snowed in by a giant storm. On the night before his marriage, the groom is murdered by someone who knows he is allergic to clams and adds them to his sandwich. It is up to Joanna to figure out the mystery--and this time she has neither Paul nor Apple to listen as she works out the solution.

[Homerun2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a strong series entry. I have grown to like the heroine Joanna, part uptight lawyer and part Miss Retro Bohemian. But the plot and action in this book were so over the top, it just verged on the preposterous.

[Natasa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book reminded me a bit of Agatha Christie novels and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Would gladly recommend it as an easy Sunday read.

[Elizabeth Butcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm giving this 3 stars for the fact that I feel this one stands on its own and doesn't rely too heavily on the crutch of vintage apparel crossed with Portland quirkiness. Instead, we dip into surrealism on the mountain, with a wedding party snowbound at a mountain lodge...and an increasing number of corpses turning up in the lodge. A PNW take on an isolated manor mystery.

My big issues with this book are the ultimate fate of the wedding dress and the alleged out-of-state origin of a container of clam dip. I'm still baffled by both.

[Valerie]

Good job of juggling many characters, but wasn't terribly engaging.