You can’t always tell a book by its cover, which is certainly the case with Wendy Tyson’s Killer Image. Protagonist Allison Campbell advertises herself as an “image consultant,” but she’s actually a lifestyle coach, only one semester short of a PhD in psychology. When a powerful politician drags in Maggie, his reluctant goth daughter, for a makeover, Allison ignores the girl’s appearance and looks for the cause of her hostility. She doesn’t have far to look, because Maggie’s family is dysfunctional in the extreme. So dysfunctional that young Maggie winds up accused in the Satanist torture-murder of a local attorney. But Maggie isn’t the only troubled character in the book; so is Allison. This is where Killer Image rises above the standard whodunit fare. This is a deep, complicated book where the ravages of child prostitution, Alzheimer’s disease, and alcoholism ruin countless lives. Author Tyson isn’t shy about leading the reader away from Philadelphia's Main Line and into seedy topless bars and tragic family histories. She’s also not afraid to point a finger at politicians who use their families as stage dressing, hiding their ambition behind “family values.”