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Add this to your collection. Next to the late Agatha Christie, Elaine Viets is my favorite mystery writer. Aside from a generous doze of humor, the inclusion of shopping tips galore at the end of her Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper series is genious.
With these books, I'm left guessing until the end, but as soon as I see it, I hit my head and say "I should have had a V8". There is a lot going on in this story, and it keeps me on my toes.I'm the type of reader who wants to find out who did it before the reveal. The clues are all in the book, but I always seem to miss the key one so I can say Ah-Ha.This book is set realistically, and the characters are fun, creative, and not boring one bit. It's amazing how Elaine Viets keeps giving us more and more. This is another take on her dead-end job series, but it's a continuous dead-end job.
And there were some things that were redundant, such as tears `leaking out of' Amelia's eyes on more than one occasion; and the reader being told more than once that Amelia has her grandmother's stubborn streak. Mueller, the neighborhood gossip [perhaps somewhat less than `charming]; her mother, Jane, who lives in the upper floor of their house, without whose help Josie probably wouldn't survive. Josie meets the ex-girlfriend, Doreen, when she opens a store in their St. But the story is fast paced and keeps the reader interested till the end, when the mystery is solved and hints are given about Josie's romantic future. Of course, Doreen's `alternative Christmas' store has the distinction of selling `pornaments,' pornographic Christmas ornaments and decorations. Elaine Viets, author of the Dead-End Job Mystery Series, this time give us the latest entry in her Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper Series, which came out just in time for the recently-past Christmas holiday season.
Josie had fallen in love with Nate's `wildness and unpredictability,' but those qualities can make for bad parenting.The book is replete with broken and dysfunctional [or `blended' and `unconventional,' depending on whether one's terms are current or more old-fashioned] families: Nate's father's wife ran off with another man, ending that marriage; Josie's mother's marriage had ended badly; Mike, Josie's present boyfriend, has a 14-year-old daughter [with his `witchy' ex-girlfriend], a sullen girl whose relationship with Josie's daughter is antagonistic, to say the least. When Josie, and then Mike, are suspected in two murders, their relationship suffers, and Josie's best friend tells her "I bet if you found the killer, things would go back to the way they were." So she sets out to do just that.There were a couple of inconsistencies, e.g., though Josie's boss faxes documents to her when necessary, at one point when Josie needs to fax something to someone she has to run out to the local Kinko's. Josie has a history of almost willfully poor choices in men: At the tender age of twenty she broke off her engagement to a `good, decent man' for Nate, a dashing helicopter pilot who, after getting Josie pregnant [at which point she left college to become a mystery shopper], left for Canada to continue the drug-dealing of which Josie was unaware, and was then arrested as he was leaving Canada when drugs were found on his plane. When her store is picketed, Doreen is called `Satan's handmaiden.' Bad feelings, and worse, abound.The usual charming characters from this series are present, including Josie's neighbor, Stan-the-Man; Mrs. Josie is a sympathetic and spunky protagonist, and it's a fun read. Nate, recently out of prison and now an alcoholic, has shown up on Josie's doorstep, anxious to meet his now nine-year-old daughter, Heather.
Louis neighborhood, strangely the third all-year-round Christmas stores in the space of three blocks.
Elaine has a way of spinning a great murder mystery with characters that are quirky, funny and believable all at the same time. Don't miss this latest installment in the Josie Marcus saga, but do yourself a real favor and read all of her earlier books in both series. I started devouring Elaine Viets' books after reading about her in a local Florida paper and I'm hooked on her both her Mystery Shopper series (which includes Murder with all the Trimmings) and her Dead End Job stories. Makes me proud to share a state with her.
What happened to the "Frosty the Deadman" dude. Did Elsie get her store back once the culprit confessed. The coincidences were just too unbelievable to be taken seriously (for example, Nate showing up the very day his daughter decides to ask for the truth about her father). With the Dead End Job series really not very good, I'm finding myself less and less likely to buy a book by Elaine Viets. However, the worst part was the dialogue, which was unbelivably stilted and silly. Sometimes a book is like a car accident -- it's so bad that you just can't tear your eyes away from it.
And the murder that did happen took over 100 pages into the book to actually occur. Did Nate's father go back to Canada and will he continue a relationship with Amelia. Unfortunately, that was the case with this installment of the Mystery Shopper series.I'm really not sure what the purpose of this installment was. When I read, I want to imagine the characters speaking, not spend time reading the words over and over, sometimes out loud, because I know people don't really talk like this.Finally, there was too much left untold. It's a shame because I loved her Francesca Vierling series. There was really no mystery, because you knew from the start who was guilty.
Mike's daughter, and the way Josie dealt with her (or rather didn't deal with her) were juvenile and annoying.
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