Julie Kenner, The Givenchy Code

This book is sort of an odd mixture of chick lit and smart thriller, and protagonist Melanie Prescott is herself an odd mixture: part shoe-obsessed shopaholic, part whip-smart code-breaker. I'm not convinced the blend is totally believable, and certainly the "I live to shop!" mentality was a little hard for me to swallow, but still, I enjoyed the book well enough. The deal is that Melanie gets caught up in a deadly game when a madman takes an international online assassin game offline. Suddenly Melanie's got a target on her back, she's paired with a hunky bodyguard, and she's got to run around New York collecting clues and solving puzzles or die. Totally not believable, of course, but kind of fun. I can see it making a halfway decent lighthearted movie. The Givenchy Code is the first installment in a footwear-themed trilogy: The next two books in the series are The Manolo Matrix and The Prada Paradox. I'd read them if they fell in my lap, but I probably won't seek them out.