Shop Till You Drop

By Elaine Viets

BIMBOS, BUSTIERS, AND BOTOX! MURDER MOST FASHIONABLE…
Author Elaine Viets kicks off this funny and fresh cozy series—about a woman on the run from her ex—with a rollicking tale of crime and vanity in the shadow world of wannabe molls. When unlikely sleuth Helen Hawthorne flees St. Louis, she fetches up in Fort Lauderdale, suddenly surrounded by the beautiful and the Botoxed.

They all shop at the same place—Juliana’s, the overpriced boutique where Helen works. And they’re all looking for a wealthy wise guy to take to the cleaners.

It’s a dead-end job with no perks—but one that pays in cash. A little shady, but it beats leaving a paper trail. Turns out shady’s only the beginning.

Juliana’s holds more secrets than a confessional, beginning with theft and drug sales, progressing to ever more ambitious scams, and inevitably, given the escalating level of crime, the murder of a felonious fashionista. The good news is there’s a reward—and Helen needs money. The bad is that she could die before she collects it.

Readers will find Helen the perfect cozy protagonist—an ordinary woman squeezed by circumstance, feeling her way as she takes control of her life whatever way she has to do it, innocent yet growing savvier by the second. You root hard for her as she settles into the role of amateur detective because you just can’t help identifying with her and hoping you’d rise to the occasion as well. And you’ll laugh out loud at the sly way author Viets skewers the South Florida culture of vanity and money.

Fans of everywoman heroines like those created by Joanna Campbell Slan, Donna Andrews, Joanne Fluke, CeeCee James, Jana DeLeon, and Janet Evanovich will fall in love with this plucky investigator. And they can settle in for a long and beautiful relationship. The best news is the series is fifteen books strong, and counting!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781625673183

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 Shop Till You Drop

[angelalam-300700 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm not a big mystery lover, but this was closer to a cozy chick lit mystery rather than a hard boiled mystery.

After reading this book, I'm considering reading another mystery either a dead-end job mystery or a Sarah Stohmeyer mystery.

[papertygers · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Cozy mystery series featuring Helen, a woman on the run from her moocher ex-husband. She works off the books at a boutique called Julianna's, and the women there are the feature of the story, as they plot hits, plan marriages, and buy pills from the store manager. Moves a tad bit slow for my pace, with not a whole lot of immediate characterization, but it picks up as the book goes on, and the characters start to mesh better together. A good read though, and I'm very interested in the rest of the series - a funny, light mystery, just what you need sometimes.

[enemyanniemae · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Cute cozy mystery. Mostly fluff with a few humorous moments.

[grshppr215 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had heard such good things about this series by Elaine Viets and I really wanted to like it but I just couldn't get into it. The main character was fine but I thought the book was too slow moving and now real action took place until the last third of the book. I hope other books in the series are not like this.

[miyurose_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a new series for me. I’ve been trying to make an effort to read more cozy mysteries, since that’s sort of what I’m trying to write. And this was a winner!Helen is hiding out in Fort Lauderdale for reasons that aren’t especially clear for a while. Needing to stay off the radar, she’s stuck with whatever job she can find that will pay her under the table, and that has left her at Juliana’s, an exclusive clothing boutique where the clothes are tiny and expensive and the customers are more plastic than flesh.But things at the store aren’t quite what they seem, and when Helen’s coworker disappears and the police start nosing around, Helen knows she needs to do something or her cover will be blown.I enjoyed Helen and her supporting cast at the apartment complex where she lives. The author gives you a good taste of the different sides of Florida, from South Beach to snowbirds. I’ll definitely be continuing this series, and I look forward to seeing what Helen will do next!

[wakela_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was the second book that I have read in this series. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the chance to read them in order. This was a book my sister found in a used book store. I want to try to find them all.I absolutely fell in love with the characters. The writing is superb. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the story is set in Sunny South Florida (which is where I live).This was one of those cozy mysteries that you just can’t put down. It really keeps you guessing because there are so many red herrings thrown into the mixture. The description of the “plastic” women who shop at those upscale boutiques in Fort Lauderdale was right on the money. I know many women who are exactly like that. I know at my last job, we would sometimes sit and try to figure out which of our clients had which plastic surgery. I definitely recommend catching her books. She also has another series of cozy mysteries out that I am going to hunt for as well.

[cyderry · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Helen has run away from a past that included a job with a six figure salary and a cheating husband to land in Florida doing a "Dead End Job" as a sales clerk in a ritzy women's boutique. It is an interesting premise and once the story actually starts to develop entertaining. As the story precedes, Helen overhears a murder for hire plot, sees drug sales, and finds blackmail plots all while trying to avoid discovery by her ex-husband and exposure by the police. She has to travel this mine field while trying to solve the murder of her former employer. Entertaining not great.

[bookwormteri · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great start to a very fun series.

[merrymary_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Helen is on the run from something, and forced to work "off the books" on deadend jobs. That's why she continues to work at an exclusive dress shop, even though the clients are shallow, surgery-obsessed, and vaguely nasty. The story involves fraud, murder, the Mob, drugs, embezzlement, and sugar daddies. The story is told with a light touch - but it seems dead on.

[krystalsbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was cute and very funny. I enjoyed the light hearted mystery and the fact that the characters made this a great read.