Size 12 is Not Fat

Size 12 is Not Fat

by Meg Cabot

Pan, $90

The appealingly titled Size 12 is Not Fat has on its back cover the following question: 'Would you kill to be thin?' Which alerts readers to the fact this season's theme will have mystery in its seams and possibly murder in its pockets. The story starts after a funny scenario in which a tiny 'less than zero' customer confronts a shop assistant, who reveals that vanity sizing is the reason clothes don't fit the way they used to. Enter size 12 heroine Heather Wells, who now knows the truth behind her size 8 success. In the first of a mystery series, Meg Cabot has former teen sensation Wells discovering that life is turning into a country and western song: her father is in jail, her mother/agent has done a runner to Buenos Aires, and her fiance has replaced her with the latest pop star, Tania Trace. So Wells takes a job looking after residents at an upmarket New York college. Here things go from blah to bloodcurdling when dorm girls start turning up dead. Size 12 is a sassy start for Wells in her new life as crime buster. It may not require much detective work, but there's fun elsewhere.