Wed 6 Jan 2016
Reviewed by Walter Albert: ELAINE VIETS – Murder Between the Covers.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[3] Comments
ELAINE VIETS – Murder Between the Covers. Signet, paperback original, 2003.
Touted by one Tim Dorsey (blurb writer and author of The Stingray Shuffle) as Janet Evanovich Meets The Fugitive, this second in the “dead end job mysteries” finds Helen Hawthorne on the run from a very messy divorce in St. Louis and working at a bookstore, Page Turners, in Fort Lauderdale.
The bookstore is run by a mean, book illiterate black sheep of a once successful family operation that he’s running into the ground. When he’s predictably murdered and a friend of Helen’s is charged with the murder, Helen, with the help of her eccentric landlady, sets out to find the real killer.
Viets worked for a year at a Barnes & Noble and the behind-the-scenes bookstore business details seem authentic. The book is funny and the warm Florida setting was irresistible to me in the prospect of a cold Pittsburgh winter. It’s not as drop-dead funny as the early Evanovich books, but the blurb shouldn’t deter anyone looking for an entertaining bibliomystery.
The Dead-End Job series —
1. Shop Till You Drop (2003)
2. Murder Between the Covers (2003)
3. Dying to Call You (2004)
4. Just Murdered (2005)
5. Murder Unleashed (2006)
6. Murder with Reservations (2007)
7. Clubbed to Death (2008)
8. Killer Cuts (2009)
9. Half-Price Homicide (2010)
10. Pumped for Murder (2011)
11. Final Sail (2012)
12. Board Stiff (2013)
13. Catnapped! (2014)
14. Checked Out (2015)
15. The Art of Murder (2016)
January 6th, 2016 at 9:24 pm
Obviously one of the more successful current crop of quirky cosy mysteries.
January 8th, 2016 at 12:17 am
As I will likely never read this series I was wondering, does every book have the same heroine, because if that is so I have to wonder at a 15 book series about someone getting 15 dead end jobs in a row? Maybe if you started as a teen working at fast food places, but that’s a lot of dead end jobs for anyone not actually a temp and even temps usually get a good position long before they do 15 unless they just like temping.
And I didn’t quite get the Fugitive reference. On the run from a divorce isn’t quite the same as on the run from the law unless the hubby was abusive.
However I am usually willing to forgive a lot for a decent bookstore murder, I just don’t think I could commit to a 15 book series.
January 8th, 2016 at 12:33 am
For some reason that escapes me now, Helen Hawthorne is on the run from her former husband and she has to work different jobs for cash under the table, hence the series.
Or at least that was the premise in the few books. Just now on Elaine Viets’ website, I found out that Helen becomes a PI somewhere along the way, but working undercover in the same kind of low paying jobs as before.
So to answer your question, yes, Helen Hawthorne is in all of them. I’ve meaning to read one, but somehow I haven’t, yet, so all of the above is hearsay.