Monday 9 September 2019

Half-Price Homicide (A Dead-End Job Mystery #9) by Elaine Viets


Half-Price Homicide (A Dead-End Job Mystery Book 9)

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.

When Fort Lauderdale’s wealthiest want to discreetly trade their best barely-worn threads for cash, they bring it to Snapdragon’s Second Thoughts—which is where Helen Hawthorne finds herself selling the most chic second-hand clothing in Florida.

But the usual haggling turns homicidal when a particularly petty customer turns up dead—dangling by a darling Gucci scarf—and Helen's boss Vera is eyed as a suspect.

Helen knows Vera can drive a hard bargain but can’t believe Vera would resort to murder. And while she would like to help, a sudden tragedy forces Helen to return to St. Louis—where she has the chance to face the past she’s been running from.

Now, if Helen doesn’t quickly deal with her fugitive status—as well as her own fractious family—she won’t make it back home in time to prevent the police from making a very unfashionable arrest…

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)



Every time I read a Dead-End Job Mystery series book by Elaine Viets it becomes my new favorite book in that series !!  And Half-Price Homicide, the Ninth book in the series, does not disappoint.

If you are a fan of this series you cannot help by LOVE Helen Hawthorne and her unique way of surviving.... I love reading in every book how she caught her husband cheating on her and how she destroyed his SUV while he cowardly hide inside it after being caught, and how the court tried to award him with half of her future earnings so she left St. Louis and ended up in Florida living in a great apartment complex with amazing neighbors and taking dead-end jobs so that she can stay below the radar of the law.

And with every dead-end job she works she always gets in the middle of a murder investigation.  But luckily she has her fiance, Phil, who happens to be a private investigator so he can help her.  

In Half-Price Homicide Helen is again working in a dead-end job at a high-end second hand designer shop where Helen waits on customers trying to save money buying slightly worn designer clothes and dusts.  Except of course things go downhill pretty quick when one of the customers is found dead in a fitting room and there are only a few suspects.  While Helen deals with her mother nonresponsive in a nursing home, she also tries to figure out the murder.....to clear her boss's name and, of course, her own.

But not everything is bleak......Helen and Phil have to go back to Helen's hometown to put her mother to rest (which yes is sad and bleak) but while they are there they meet with a few lawyers so that Helen can finally stop running from her ex-husband and her and Phil can finally get married and live happily ever after....or as close at that that Helen can get to !!!

Viets has a GREAT series in the Dead-End Job mystery series and I fall deeper in love with everything about this series.....I know you will also !!!!


Review by Missi M.

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