Sunday 17 May 2020

Board Stiff (A Dead-End Job Mystery #12) by Elaine Viets


Board Stiff (A Dead-End Job Mystery Book 12)
From Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author Elaine Viets—the thrilling mystery series about one woman trying to make a living... while other people are making a killing.

Helen Hawthorne and Phil—her husband and PI partner—are on the case when Jim Sandusky asks them to save his business. Because while “Sunny Jim’s Stand-Up Paddleboard Rental” is garnering a lot of attention, it’s not the kind the beachside business ever hoped to attract.

There’s a local restaurateur who wants the land for a parking lot, a competing board rental place aiming to poach customers, and a gang of local politicos who just want Jim gone. And Jim wants Coronado Investigations to find proof of dirty dealings.

They don’t have to try very hard, because it’s not too long before a customer of Jim’s dies after an accident. But when Jim insists it was a murder set up to make him look bad, it’s up to Helen and Phil to prove it before Sunny Jim’s is sunk for good.

Praise for the Dead-End Job Mysteries by Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author Elaine Viets

“A stubborn and intelligent heroine, a wonderful South Florida setting, and a cast of more-or-less lethal bimbos...I loved this book.”—Charlaine Harris
“Brave Viets preps by actually working the jobs she describes in loving and hilarious detail, giving her offbeat series a healthy balance between the banal and the bizarre.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Laugh-out-loud comedy with enough twists and turns to make it to the top of the mystery bestseller charts.” —Florida Today
“Fans of Janet Evanovich and Parnell Hall will appreciate Viets’s humor.”—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“Wit, murder, and sunshine . . . it must be Florida. I love this new series.”—Nancy Pickard
“A heroine with a sense of humor and a gift for snappy dialogue.”—Jane Heller
   (Summary via Goodreads)



I am a huge fan of the Dead-End Job Mystery series by Elaine Viets and Board Stiff, the twelfth book in the series, will tear at your heartstrings.    I know this series is a mystery series but after reading previous books, readers will get to know Helen and her group of friends and you cannot help but develop feelings for them.  And now that Helen and Phil are married and have their own private investigators business, you love them even more.

Another reason to love this series is the dead-end jobs that Helen usually takes.  Now that her and Phil are married and they have their private investigators business, they take jobs in order to solve the cases they get .... and the fun part is that now Phil gets to work some dead-end jobs as well.

In Board Stiff they are hired by Sunny Jim who owns a paddleboard rental and lesson business on Riggs Beach.  He thinks the city is going to revoke his business license so that a shady restaurant and business owner can get his location to expand his parking lot.  And when a customer of Sunny Jim's goes out paddleboarding and dies, Helen and Phil dive in head first to find out what happened and help Sunny Jim save his business.

You know it's going to be a good case when they recruit their landlady and friend, Margery to help with the investigation.  

Readers will love this series and want to return to Coronado Tropics Apartments to visit Helen, Phil, and Margery and see what is going on.  They will want to follow Helen around to all the dead-end jobs and watch how her and Phil work together solving cases.  They will even want to sit poolside in a cloud of Margery's smoke drinking wine from a box in a plastic wineglass.  There are so many reasons to read these books......I could continue to tell you but that's preventing you from picking up one and starting it. 



Review Missi M.

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