Shop Till You Drop (A Dead-End Job Mystery #1) by Elaine Viets

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.  (Summary via Goodreads)


The Dead-End Job Mystery series by Elaine Viets has been around since 2003 and there are 15 books in this series to date.  I may be getting around to them late but I can assure you that I will be reading ALL of them !!

Shop Till You Drop is the first book in this series and it was so fun and easy to read.  You will instantly love Helen Hawthorne, the main character, as well as feel sorry for her.  She had a great life in St. Louis...she had a husband, a nice house and a 6 figure paying job.  Until she caught her husband cheating on her and she went crazy.  And to make matters worse, the judge sided with her lazy, cheating husband and wanted her to continue to pay the man a percentage of her future earnings.... So she up and leaves and ends up in Fort Lauderdale working under the table, just making ends meet and staying under the radar so her ex will never get another dime from her !!!  

Well the job she has seems to be a pretty good job.  She's working at a high-end clothing store .... where customers have to ring a doorbell to obtain access into the store !!!  Helen's boss Christina is the manager and she knows the in's and out's of all the "popular" girls.  Not only does she know the in's and out's but she knows some pretty heavy secrets.....secrets that get her killed !!  Leaving Helen to fend for herself and try to figure things out.  

How can you not like a story where the main character is "running from the law", living in a little apartment complex with some interesting tenants, working with the police while trying to keep her past a secret, and trying to find out how Christina could afford the lifestyle she was living on the salary she was receiving as well as solve her murder.

Oh and Helen knows that she can't work at Juliana's for much longer and trying to find another job where she can get paid under the table is not that easy.  You cannot help but love her determination to keep her whereabouts from her ex-husband and the courts but feel sorry for her for having to live the way she is.

I fell in love with Shop Till You Drop for so many reasons and cannot wait to read the next book in this series......Murder Between the Covers.  I know that it will be just as great because I know where her next dead-end job is going to be and I LOVE IT !!!!

Review by Missi S.