Shop Till You Drop

Praise for Shop till You Drop

“Elaine Viets has come up with all the ingredients for an irresistible mystery: a heroine with a sense of humor and a gift for snappy dialogue, an atmospheric South Florida backdrop, a cast of entertaining secondary characters, and some really nasty crimes. I’m looking forward to the next installment in her new Dead-End Job series.”

—Jane Heller, author of The Secret Ingredient and Lucky Stars

“Elaine Viets’s debut Dead-End Job mystery is a live wire. It’s Janet Evanovich meets

The Fugitive

as Helen Hawthorne takes Florida by storm. Shop no further—this is the one.”

—Tim Dorsey, author of Florida Roadkill and The Stingray Shuffle

“Elaine Viets is fabulous. I fell in love with her dead-on funny Dead-End Job mysteries and so will you.”

—Jerrilyn Farmer, author of Mumbo Gumbo

“I loved this book. With a stubborn and intelligent heroine, a wonderful South Florida setting, and a cast of more-or-less lethal bimbos,

Shop till You Drop

provides tons of fun. Six-toed cats, expensive clothes, sexy guys on motorcycles—this book has it all.”

—Charlaine Harris, author of Club Dead and Poppy Done to Death

“Wit, murder, and sunshine . . . it must be Florida. I love this new series by Elaine Viets.”

—Nancy Pickard, national bestselling author of Ring of Truth

“Fresh, funny, and fiendishly constructed,

Shop till You Drop

gleefully skewers cosmetic surgery, ultraexclusive clothing boutiques, cheating ex-husbands, and the Florida dating game, as attractive newcomer Helen Hawthorne takes on the first of her deliciously awful dead-end jobs and finds herself enmeshed in drugs, embezzlement, and murder. A bright start to an exciting new series. This one is hard to beat.”

—Parnell Hall, author of the Puzzle Lady crossword puzzle mysteries

Praise for Elaine Viets and her mysteries

“Refreshing.”

—Los Angeles Times

“I’m looking forward to reading more.”

—John Lutz

“Great dialogue, colorful repeat characters who seem to grow on the reader—and a deft hand at surprise endings.”

—Gannett News Service

“Plenty of laughs and likable characters.”

—Arizona Republic

“Amusing . . . has a universal ring of truth whether you’re from the Midwest or South Florida.”

—South Florida Sun-Sentinel

“Fun.”

—St. Louis Journalism Review

“Viets is a natural-born storyteller.”

—AudioFile Magazine

“Believable. . . . Viets can tell a tale.”

—St. Petersburg Times

For Anne Watts and Thumbs, who both enjoy curling up with a good book

Acknowledgments

I want to thank my husband, Don Crinklaw, for his patience. When I asked him “Do you think it would sound better if I changed the ‘a’ to ‘the’?” he actually gave me a serious answer.

And my pitbull agent, David Hendin.

And my enthusiastic editor, Genny Ostertag, who keeps dreaming up dead-end jobs for me, so I can have the job I really want.

Thanks to the Penguin Putnam copy editors and production staff, who were so careful.

So many people helped with this book. I hope I didn’t leave anyone out.

Thanks to Joanne Sinchuk and John Spera at Murder on the Beach bookstore in Delray Beach, Florida. They