"Humorous satirical amateur sleuth tale"

When she gains weight becoming a size 12 and nears thirty, her boyfriend Jordan Cartwright switches to a size 2; her recording studio Cartwright Records (owned by Jordan's dad) assumes her fans at the mall will desert her because she became too "normally" fat dump her. However, the biggest hurt is that her mother and her manager embezzled all the money she earned as a singer to live the good life in Argentina while Heather Wells needs to find work to survive.

Heather obtains a job as an assistant dorm director at Greenwich Village's New York College. The work is relatively easy mostly keeping raging hormones out of the dorm though her coeds are smart, sneaky and sly when it comes to gender warfare. However, everything changes when the corpse of a female student is found at the bottom of the elevator shaft in the residence hall Heather oversees. The NYPD detectives quickly assume it is an accident due to surfing the elevator; Heather's boss Rachel gleefully accepts their ruling. Heather thinks murder occurred. When no one listens to her including the centerfold private investigator Jordan's brother, Carter, she begins to investigate on her own as another student dies leaping across elevators.

Meg Cabot's satirical look at what a person does when their fifteen minutes of fame ends is a humorous satirical amateur sleuth tale that young adults and older readers will appreciate. Obviously Heather is the focus of the amusing story line as she tries to solve what she assumes is homicide and everyone else concludes is a youthful accidental foolish tragedy. Size 12 is the right size for a fine Manhattan murder mystery.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted December 15, 2005