Shop Till You Drop, Elaine Viets
Shop Till You Drop, Elaine Viets
List: $22.00 | Sale: $15.40
Club: $11.00

Shop Till You Drop

Author: Elaine Viets

Narrator: Sarah Pesek

Unabridged: 9 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/01/2021


Synopsis

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!

About Elaine Viets

Elaine Viets has written over thirty mysteries among four series. A former director-at-large for the Mystery Writers of America, she is a frequent contributor to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and anthologies edited by Charlaine Harris and Lawrence Block.


Reviews

This book was a well constructed machine-like work of art. You can see the cogs and wheels, the gears and other plot devices. The book is unashamedly nude. It wears its heart on its sleeve. The was a scrapable amount of muted humor in the book, but nothing to smile about. That's just a mental picture......more

Goodreads review by Cheryl

The first book in a series about Helen who found her husband with another women and since he had been a stay at home husband she was ordered by the court to pay him. She didn't agree and took off. Now she has to work at poorly paid jobs that are paid under the table so she can stay hidden. She is wo......more

Really 3.5 stars, but I rounded up. I have heard people simply raving over and over again about how good this series is, so when I saw this book at a rummage store about a year ago, I picked it up and bought it. Until now, however, I never got around to reading it. Shop Till You Drop was a funny, fas......more

Goodreads review by Stina

#37 for 2011 Meh. I didn't hate this book, but mainly because it didn't try hard enough for me to actually work up any serious expectations. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't all that good, either. Not good enough for three stars, anyway. Just shy of mediocre, I suppose. Lots of contrived and/or predictab......more