Well Bred and Dead: A High Society Mystery

Catherine O'Connell

Oct 2009 · High Society Mystery Series Book 1 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

Newly widowed Pauline Cook was once the toast of the Windy City elite—but now she's practically broke. At least she's in better shape than her dear departed friend Ethan Campbell, whose corpse Pauline has had the misfortune to discover. A writer who chronicled the lives, loves, and ensembles of the Gold Coast's most elegant ladies, Ethan apparently took his own life—while inelegantly clad in old boxers, no less. And since no relatives are coming forward to claim Ethan's remains, it falls to Pauline to settle his final affairs . . . with her own dwindling funds.

However, there are things about Ethan's suicide that don't seem to add up: the ratty undergarments he "chose" to die in, for example . . . and the multiple birth certificates the police turn up in his apartment. Before she can truly lay her friend to rest, plucky Pauline's determined to get to the bottom of his increasingly suspicious death.

Ratings and reviews

I read this book in one day. I'd read the first one, WELL BRED AND DEAD, so I knew what to expect as far as the superb storytelling--both in the writing and the plotting, and the (I'll call her ...

After she discovers her best friend dead, an apparent suicide, widowed Chicago socialite Pauline Cook soon learns that she is also the executrix of his will, meaning that she will have to pay all his ...

If you can't be too rich or too thin, can you be too dead, or not dead enough?Her best friend Ethan Campbell's suicide makes socialite Pauline Cook wonder whether his life was a sham—a question she ...

About the author

Catherine O'Connell divides her time between Chicago and Aspen, and sits on the board of the Aspen Writers' Foundation. A graduate of the University of Colorado School of Journalism, she is also the author of Well Bred and Dead.