Murder Between the Covers

Written by Elaine Viets

Narrated by Sarah Pesek

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 is still on the run because of her refusal to pay her worthless ex-husband alimony. But a girl’s gotta eat…and pay rent, utilities, etc. So she’s taken a cash-paying job at Fort Lauderdale’s own Page Turners bookstore. And while the job is decent enough, the owner of the store is anything but.

Page Turner III is a boor with more money than brains: he’s cheating on his wife while running his family business into the ground and has a list of enemies longer than any bestseller. So when he turns up dead, no one is too surprised. What is surprising is where—in the bed of Helen’s glamorous gal pal Peggy, whose usual bedmates are more cultured, refined…and still breathing.

Worse still, it turns out that Peggy once had a tryst with the late Mr. Turner that ended quite badly, with a scorned Peggy promising the lothario payback—and someone is making it look like she finally collected. With Peggy as the prime suspect in a murder, it’s up to Helen to prove her friend innocent before the police throw the book at her…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Everand Productions
• Release date: Jun 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094418810

Elaine Viets

Elaine Viets has written 33 mysteries in four series: the bestselling Dead-End Job series with South Florida PI Helen Hawthorne, the cozy Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper mysteries, and the dark Francesca Vierling mysteries. With the Angela Richman Death Investigator series, Elaine returns to her hardboiled roots and uses her experience as a stroke survivor and her studies at the Medicolegal Death Investigators Training Course. Elaine was a director at large for the Mystery Writers of America. She's a frequent contributor to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and anthologies edited by Charlaine Harris and Lawrence Block. Elaine won the Anthony, Agatha and Lefty Awards.

Reviews for Murder Between the Covers

[nigche · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Easy read, nice story and easy to follow the plot.

[tshwarelom29 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I loved the first book, it was very funny and kept me intrigued. This was boring, not funny at all, and just a repeat of the previous one's plot with a few changes, from the way that Helen did her little investigation, the use of animals at the end to catch the killer and the men she dates, nothing original at all.

Pedophilia being used for gags left a poor taste in my mouth. Also, what's with the author's obsession with making characters that aren't white seem " less than", the number of times it was pointed out that Hispanic characters didn't speak proper English was concerning. Every other character who is white and isn't a native English speaker was only given an accent and no mention of them not speaking English properly was made. This is something I noticed in both this book and the first one, I had to stop listening to the 3rd one after the same thing happened within 20 minutes into the 3rd one.

[Chris J · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have read dozens of cozies . I would get five stars if it were not for the WOKE factor. I really like the first book. Both are clever, and well written.

[Debbie Dawley · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Awful!!!!!!!!!
Both the story in the narrator remind me of stories written by grade schoolers

[Rashi Bedekar · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful! Loved the book. So real. I just love Helen’s character. A combination of funny, witty, sarcastic and mystery. Just as good as the 1st book. I look forward to reading the next one in the series. The author may or may not have a lot of detective experience but she definitely has a lot of experience of working in a book store. You can see from all the details that none of it was made up. She did a splendid job of bringing to life her experience through her book.

[Marilyn Sebourn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I thought that there was too much time gone by without introducing the murder of Page Turner. Like so many other audiobooks, I realize that the voice talent is very important, but I wish more than one person would play the different parts - maybe a man to voice the male parts. It takes away from believability when the lady narrator does not sound like a male character, especially like a very masculine character such as Gabriel.

[stella mallon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A light escape ... I laughed a few times too ?

[Nicole Jacobson · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Would have been nice to listen to the whole book. It ended before it even got to chapter 4. Disappointed

[Mattie Harper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For the record...Black guys don't sound Irish, but good story

[bsquaredinoz · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Helen Hawthorne works for cash at Page Turners, a family owned bookstore in South Florida. The proprietor, Page Turner III, is horrible to staff and customers alike and few people are upset when he is murdered. Helen is forced to investigate his death when her friend Peggy is arrested for his murder and finds that almost everyone who knew Page Turner had a good motive for killing him.

The interesting fact behind this series (which as of this year will run to eight books) is that before writing each book Elaine Viets does the jobs that she describes in the book. She was, according to her website FAQ, a bookseller for over a year before (or perhaps while) writing Murder Between the Covers. I'm sure this is what helps to give the bookstore and its myriad of demanding, (and only occasionally lovely) customers. Having done my share of time in jobs dealing with the general public I found much to relate to in that aspect of the book.

The rest of the book is fairly standard for the genre. Each potential suspect is eliminated, generally via direct questioning, until there's only one potential killer remaining and most of this was done quite believably although the ending was a little too contrived. There are a series of oddball characters, such as Helen's purple-loving 76-year-old landlady, Margery, who provided the kind of humour I tend to like in my cosies.

My one problem with the book is that I never quite bought into the Helen character. The premise is that she works for cash because any income she earns officially has to be shared with her ex-husband so even though she's well-educated she works 'dead-end jobs'. I suspect that in the real world someone smart in similar circumstances would just get themselves some good quality fake identification and get a better paying job. So there were quite a few points when I thought "well you really don't have to be in that situation" and so I couldn't summon up the sympathy I'm sure I was supposed to have.

[livelylady · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Cutesy, Florida location, murder mystery. Helen, a worker in a bookstore, makes it her job to find out who killed Page Turner, the owner of a chain of bookstores. The characters were quirky, the local references were funny. Just not my genre of book.

[gerleliz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Better and better