Ellen Byerrum Raiders of the Lost Corset

Raiders of the Lost Corset

Ellen Byerrum

Signet, July 2006, $6.99, 288 pp.

ISBN 0451219031

The Eye Street Observer "Crime of Fashion" columnist Lacey Smithsonian visits master corsetier Magda Rousseau as she lies dying in her workshop. With her last dying breath she begs Lacey "to find the corset". The two women were heading to France to find the expensive jeweled corset that was stolen by a Latvian soldier when the Bolsheviks killed the royal family.

She journeys to a farmhouse in Monk Saint Michel where Magda's relatives live. Magda believed it was hidden somewhere in the house but Jean-Claude Rousseau tells her that it is nowhere in the in the house and the only room locked up for decades is the coal room. When they remove the nails that keep the door permanently closed, Lacey finds a note with an address on it. There is no such number on the street in but her lover tells her there is a street by the same name in New Orleans. When she gets back to the states, she finds the address and the druggist who works there has an urn for her left there decades ago. A note inside the urn leads her to a crypt that has nothing inside but another address. When she goes there, the proprietor knows nothing about what they are looking for. After nearly being killed, Lacey continues the hunt while avoiding Magda's fate.

This is a hilarious crime caper where one has the clues to find the bejeweled corset. The support cast, including the villains act in such a clich d manner that reader will find themselves laughing out loud. The heroine is stubborn, intractable and totally adorable as she marches a path through France and New Orleans to find something that might not even exist. Ellen Byerrum has a hit series on her hands with her latest tale.

Harriet Klausner