"Sublime who-done-it"

Used to wealth and privilege the Blackbird sisters have to find gainful employment after their parents wasted their trust funds and fled the country to a place that doesn't have an extradition treaty. Nora Blackbird works as an assistant to society editor Kitty Keogh, a relationship filled with antipathy, anger, and jealously on the employer's part because her worker has entry into the high society that closes its doors to her.

Kitty wakes Nora up to have her cover a fashion show featuring the broken bra designed by Brinker Hill, a high society sadist who almost raped Nora's younger sister Emma when they were in school together. Later that night the murdered body of Kitty is delivered to Nora's front door and the police want to pin the crime on Nora's lover Michael, whose family is mafia connected. To clear his name, Nora takes many chances including breaking and entering into Brinker's office where she thinks evidence exists that could clear Michael.

Michael and Nora come from two different worlds but together they make their own filled with love respect and tenderness. When the outside world intrudes, Nora is like a tiger protecting her mate and she is particularly suspicious of Brinker who couldn't invent a paper plane and is suspected of the arson of his comedy club. There are many people who hated the victim but Nora focuses on Brinker and socialite Hemmings Lamb, a submissive with a criminal bent. Both men had their names on Kitty's calendar on the date she was murdered. Nancy Martin has written a sublime who-done-it filled with laughter, heroes and plenty of action.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted March 13, 2005

Summary

Combine "great clothes, great mystery, [and] great fun" (Jennifer Crusie) and you get this "smart and sophisticated series" (Jane Heller) featuring a trio of hot-blooded bluebloods with a manor-born flair for fashion... and for solving crimes.

Things are going great for the Blackbirds. Columnist Nora is still dating mobster's son Michael Abruzzo, Emma's recovering nicely in a clinic for the rich and infamous, and Libby's pleased about her new career with Potions and Passions, a company that keeps its customers very satisfied. Best of all, nobody in Nora's vicinity has been knocked off lately.

Nora's next journalistic assignment: cover the unveiling of the most miraculous bra in fashion history. But before Nora can hand in her uplifting story, her boss is discovered shot execution-style and trussed up in expensive panty hose—an Abruzzo family trademark.

Now it's up to Nora to find the killer before her innocent lover takes the rap. That means shadowing the most glamorous suspects in Philadelphia—including a bad-boy designer, a former child star, a neurotic neat freak, a high-strung ad exec, and a pair of luscious twin models on the rise. Though Nora's accustomed to "murder with style,"* cross your fingers for the Blackbird sisters, because this time, high society has never seemed so low-down dirty.

*Pittsburgh Magazine

"Nora Blackbird has humor, haute couture, and sexual heat, and Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die has me hooked on the Blackbird sisters." —Harley Jane Kozak, author of Dating Dead Men and Dating is Murder