Title: Size Zero
Author: AC Moyer
Publisher: Aurelia Press
ISBN: 978-0997782233
Pages: 277
Genre: Fiction / Mystery
Review: Joe Kilgore
Pacific Book Review
Author AC Moyer has concocted an intensely compelling mystery that drapes the haute couture world of fashion in New York City with glistening accessories such as kidnapping, physical and mental abuse, murder, prostitution, and sex trafficking. If you take pleasure in seeing the world of high fashion skewered on its own diamond-studded petard, you’ll dash through these pages swiftly and admiringly as the author dissects models, agents, plastic surgeons, and various other hangers-on with the precision of a skilled surgeon. Be warned however, to get from the initial mystery to the final denouement, you’ll not only stroll through the luxurious corridors of the rich and famous, you’ll also be dragged into and through some of the most seedy and degrading behavior imaginable. But then isn’t that what good novels are all about?
The male protagonist is named Cecil—already more original than the Jack, Jake, or Larry one usually finds in these sorts of yarns. He’s the son of an outrageously eccentric, and perhaps malevolent, mother who owns one of the Big Apple’s most successful modeling agencies. She strolls around her midtown mansion with one hand on her erotic ivory cane as her other appendage rests on the visible handgun displayed in a holster round her waist. Originally a product of the humid environs of New Orleans, she managed to build a modeling empire on the grave of her rich husband and various secretive dealings with a coterie of nefarious characters.
The plot ostensibly revolves around the disappearance of Cecil’s childhood love, Annabelle, their chauffeur’s daughter who has been missing for multiple years. She apparently shows up as a human flesh-wrap in a fashion show and once again the hunt is on to find out what happened to her initially, what has she been subjected to in the interim, and who might be responsible for her probable kidnapping and her supposed murder. The use of an avalanche of qualifying adjectives in the previous sentence is required because in this story, things are seldom as they seem.
Moyer is a very fine writer who seems to delight in turning phrases that are descriptively caustic. She depicts a group of women now too old to model thusly. Half the women stood slack-jawed, as much as was possible given the surgery and Botox. Her dialogue also crackles with the snap of sarcasm as she has one man refer to a decidedly different young woman as “Hell, she’s super sexy too, in an Audrey-Hepburn-meets-Morticia kind of way.” She also frequently shows painful insight. One example is when she has a young, uneducated model-want-to-be utter: “Kim Kardashian was famous for a sex tape, I’ll be famous after working in a whorehouse.”
As is the case with many thrillers, shocks abound, mysteries are circuitously unraveled, loose ends are tied-up nicely, and there’s even a hint that some of the characters might return again in a subsequent tale. While the eventual climax of the novel seems somewhat prolonged, one can understandably see its appropriateness given all the violence, mayhem, and sex acts that have preceded it.
Moyer has written a ghastly, yet seemingly credible exposé of the potential horrors that might be going on behind the curtains of today’s fashion industry. Her familiarity with New York City provides additional authenticity to a cautionary tale we hope is much more fiction than fact. It’s a fascinating read, particularly for the majority of us who are far from Size Zero.
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