Dead-End Job Mystery Books
Once on the fast track to success, Helen Hawthorne is now going nowhere fast. She traded in her chic life for a shabby one. And now she's on the fun, jumping from city to city and dead-end job to dead-end job, trying to stay one step ahead of her past... After two weeks as the new salesclerk at Juliana's, Fort Lauderdale's ultra-exclusive clothing boutique, Helen still feels out of fashion. And since the only crime likely to be committed around here is being old-or worse, looking old-Helen figures she is safe. Until she discovers the manager has been embezzling money and selling designer drugs along with the designer clothes. Add murder to the mix-and Helen's dead-end job is downright deadly.
Helen has a new job "off the books" at Page Turners bookstore in Fort Lauderdale...until the owner is murdered. But since the arrogant Page Turner III had so many enemies, Helen will have to read between the lines to uncover the truth about a clever killer.
While making the best of her new telemarketing job, Helen Hawthorne thinks she hears a murder on the other end of the line-and must avoid a close call with a killer.
South Florida sleuth Helen Hawthorne gets a history lesson from her landlady Margery Flax. In the 1970s, while pushing papers in a dead-end job, Margery witnessed a battle of the blondes between vivacious Vicki and meticulous Minnie for a promotion that would take one of them to the top of the corporate ladder. But when their office politics turned dirty, the blondes got dangerous—leaving one of them dead and one of them a killer whose identity Margery has kept secret for more than forty years… Killer Blonde previously appeared in Drop-Dead Blonde Includes a preview of the Dead-End Job Novel, Catnapped! Praise for the Dead-End Job Mysteries by Elaine Viets Winner of the Anthony Award and the Agatha Award “A stubborn and intelligent heroine, a wonderful South Florida setting, and a cast of more or less lethal bimbos.” —#1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris “Clever.…The real draw, though, is Viets’s snappy critique of South Florida.” —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review “Wickedly funny.” — The Miami Herald Elaine Viets has actually worked many of those dead-end jobs in her mystery novels, just like her character Helen Hawthorne. She is also the author of the Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper series and numerous short stories. Elaine has won an Anthony Award and an Agatha Award. She lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with her husband, reporter Don Crinklaw.
Helen Hawthorne's new job at a bridal salon becomes downright funereal when a bride-to-be's mother is murdered. Now, Helen must find the killer before this turns into another dead-end position for her-literally.
Helen Hawthorne has no choice but to take on a series of dead-end jobs to make ends meet. Unfortunately, they're exposing her to a lot of people who end up dead. Her latest gig at the Pampered Pet Boutique isn't proving to be a warm and furry exception-and now she's got a murder to solve and a kidnapped pup to find, all before a Category 3 hurricane hits.
In the sequel to Murder Unleashed, Helen Hawthorne finds her job at Sybil's Full Moon Hotel in Fort Lauderdale threatened and her troubles mounting when the body of a maid turns up in a dumpster, a discovery that could bring the local cops down on her head and lead to a confrontation with her ex-husband, who is hot on her trail.
national bestselling author viets reveals the lifestyles of the rich and murdered... In the Superior Club's complaint department, Helen Hawthorne has to deal with the rich and spoiled. Then her deadbeat ex-husband sails back into her life aboard the yacht of his new lady-known as the "Black Widow" because of her string of dead spouses. When Helen's ex goes missing, she fears the Black Widow may have struck again. Helen's barely begun digging when a club patron is found with his membership permanently expired. Now Helen must find her ex and get to the truth-without getting clubbed herself...
Helen Hawthorne's latest gig is working in Miguel Angel's Fort Lauderdale hair salon, where a trim can cost as much as a car payment and a blowout can wipe you out. But when a famous husband of one of the salon's clients is murdered at their wedding reception, things get a little hairy...
The national bestselling author presents a high society murder mystery... At Snapdragon, a high-end designer consignment shop, Helen is at the beck and call of snobby- yet frugal-customers. That alone is a deadly combination, especially with Chrissy, a drool-worthy fashionista who walks in with a purse to sell, and ends up screaming at her husband and another customer. Helen is used to dealing with snobby women, controlling husbands, and fashionable politicians. But she's about to have to handle a brand new type of unsatisfied customer-a murderer. Chrissy is found dead in Snapdragon's dressing room, with the hand-painted scarf Helen was just holding tied around her neck. And Helen goes from being low on society's totem pole to high on the police's suspect list.
Back in Miami after a relaxing honeymoon, Helen Hawthorne and her new hubby Phil are opening their own PI agency—specializing in families with private problems. But even with a new business, Helen can’t seem to get away from those dead-end jobs. Helen and Phil’s very first client is Shelby, a woman who wants them to spy on her husband, Bryan. Six months ago, he bought a gym membership—and now Shelby suspects he’s developing a killer body for another woman. Suddenly Helen finds herself back in a dead-end job at Fantastic Fitness, working as a receptionist to keep track of Bryan. The only catch is that to work at the gym, Helen has to stay fit and pump some iron herself. To make matters worse, when their budding agency takes on another case involving a decades-old murder, Helen has to move her workouts to the wee hours of the morning just to keep up. With so much weight on her aching shoulders, will Helen catch a killer and get a body to die for—or just drop dead from exhaustion?
Husband and wife PI team Helen Hawthorne and Phil Sagemont each have their hands full, but only Helen has to carry drink trays—as part of her latest undercover assignment.... To catch a jewel smuggler on a luxury yacht, Helen is posing as the ship’s new stewardess. But between serving drinks and scrubbing floors, she’s starting to miss dry land almost as much as she misses Phil. Meanwhile, Phil is trying to catch a sexy gold digger who may have killed her elderly husband. Good thing Phil is a master of disguise, playing it cool as everything from an air-conditioning repairman to a Rastafarian. Helen and Phil help each other out whenever possible, but when Helen’s on her own on the high seas, she needs to watch her step—or she may wind up going from undercover to overboard....
Husband and wife PI team Helen Hawthorne and Phil Sagemont won’t be sparing the sunscreen on their latest assignment, but they’re about to find out murder is no day at the beach…. Will the Real Paddleboard Killer Please Stand Up? There’s a dark cloud over Sunny Jim’s Safety First Parasailing and Stand-Up Paddleboarding business on Florida’s Riggs Beach—especially after one of his clients is killed in a tragic paddleboarding mishap. Sunny Jim is sure it was no accident, and he hires Helen and Phil to find the murderer. Between cutthroat competitors poaching his territory, the city threatening to revoke his license, a restaurant owner wanting his beach spot for a parking lot, and a wrongful death suit filed by the victim’s husband, Sunny Jim may soon be up the creek without a paddle. But he does have Helen and Phil on his side, and as the couple start to investigate, they discover dark undercurrents of corruption behind the cheerful facades of the beachfront businesses, as well as domestic secrets. But the sands of time are running out, and if they don’t catch the killer soon, Sunny Jim won’t be the only one to go under….
No more pussyfooting around! Husband and wife PI team Helen Hawthorne and Phil Sagemont have barely scratched the surface of the world of show cats when a cornered kitty kidnapper’s claws come out.... This show cat is a no-show.... The one thing celebrity Trish Barrymore and her no-account accountant husband, Mort, can agree on in their bitter divorce is shared cat custody. But when Mort is found brained by a mahogany cat tower, and Justine, their pedigreed Chartreux show cat, goes missing, Trish calls on Helen and Phil. Despite a ransom note from the catnapper, Trish is still the prime murder suspect in the eyes of the police. As they await the post-Mort-em, it’s up to Helen and Phil to find the feline filcher and let the cat out of the bag. Discovering that Mort had some shady dealings within cat show circles, Helen goes undercover as an assistant for a woman who shows prizewinning Persians. But Phil is not buying Trish’s cat-that-swallowed-a-canary act—he thinks she might be staging the whole catnapping. As Helen and Phil get deeper into a high-pressure world of primping, posing, and purring to collar a killer, they get caught up in a cat-and-mouse game where the stakes are literally life and death....
PI Helen Hawthorne goes undercover at a local library to find a painting and solve a murder in the national bestselling mystery series. Wealthy socialite Elizabeth Cateman Kingsley has hired Helen to find a missing John Singer Sargent painting, owned by her late father. After his death, many of Davis Kingsley’s books were donated to the Flora Park Library, and his daughter suspects the small watercolor—worth a million dollars—was tucked away inside one of those dusty tomes. To search the stacks, Helen applies for a job as a library volunteer and discovers the library has a catalog of complaints—from a mischievous calico cat to the mysterious disappearance of various items that some of the staff are attributing to a ghost. Things only get worse when a dead body turns up in a parking lot. Now Helen is bound and determined to find the killer as well as the painting—before she’s taken out of circulation herself.
From the national bestselling author of Checked Out , Helen Hawthorne must pose as a painter to catch an artful killer . . . The art world is a happening place—but a brush with death shouldn’t be in the picture. Unfortunately, that’s just what happens to Helen Hawthorne and her friend Margery. While touring gorgeous Bonnet House, a mansion turned museum, they note an up-and-coming artist in a painting class. When they later see her deadly end, Helen is hired to canvas the crime scene—undercover, of course. Sketchy suspects lurk in the victim’s past. Was the promising painter killed by her jealous husband? Her best friend? A rival using her artful wiles? With her husband, Phil, busy setting a trap for a gold thief, it’s up to Helen to paint this killer into a corner...