Customer Reviews

Just Murdered (Dead-End Job Mystery)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the first book I have read in this series. I thought I'd really like it, but I was extremely disappointed. It was dull and predictable. The vocabulary seemed odd like a person from other than the gold coast was speaking. Either the vocabualry was overworked or the author is British. It just didn't fit with the setting.

After reading other reviews, I am not giving up on the series, (I have already bought 3 others)Maybe the rest will be better.

I usually enjoy this series a lot, but this installment just didn't do it for me.

Helen just took up with Phil in the last book, and already they're declaring their undying love for each other. Not once, but twice, Helen jumps to the wrong conclusion about Phil and his ex-wife and comes off as near-suicidal. It was just way too much too soon after the start of the romance.

I also thought the plot was weak. Mother of the bride deaths are being done way too much lately. The characters come across as one-dimensional and unlikeable. Add that to a thin plot and this just wasn't as enjoyable as other installments of the series.

Helen Hawthorne's new job is at Millicent's Bridal Salon. Somehow Helen thought a Bridal Salon would be a nice place to work. Happy brides wanting to make their special day perfect.

That was before she met a running stream of Bridezilla's and their mothers. The worse is Desiree Shenrad, a true mouse and her tyrannical, rich and obnoxious mother Kiki, who not only makes all the decisions on the wedding, but seems to have even picked out the groom.

It doesn't seem that big of a loss when Kiki winds up dead, stuffed in a closet at the wedding. Except that Helen's fingerprints seem to be all over the place and the police are giving her a second look.

To prevent them from finding out who she is, Helen decides to investigate and discover who really wanted this mother-of-the-bride dead. Her ex-husband, her daughter, the prospective son-in-law, an actor that she wouldn't let take a part because it was degrading? What about Millicent, the bridal shop owner who had threatened her, or the chauffeur who thought she was leaving him a lot of money in her will, but was actually getting ready to dump him.

With this list of suspects, Helen hoped it wouldn't take too long to find the killer, or the police may just uncover her hidden identity first.

Highlights:

The mystery was pretty good, a lot of suspects and Helen does actually investigate and finds clues which lead her to the killer.

The romance of Margery - Helen's landlady and new resident Warren who teaches dancing.

We didn't have to read the long drawn out version of why Helen's hiding.

Lowlights.

This series has been improving since the first book which I disliked, but this one is a set-back.

The mystery was ok, but not only is Kiki such a horrible person that you don't care that she gets killed, you also don't care about anyone else. I hated them all.

Phil - formerly Phil the pothead whose true identity came out in the last book and is now Helen's new boyfriend. I think Phil was a better character when he was unseen and only talked about.

Why do so many people in these books always have to be ridiculously polite, Phil letting his ex-wife, who is trying to get him back move in with him while she's in town, even though he knows it upsets Helen and he can hear her crying about it. "She doesn't have anywhere to stay, so I have to let her stay here." In real life you'd tell her to get a hotel and maybe, just maybe pay for a few nights there if she's pleading poverty.

I'm hoping that the next book will be better.

When Helen Hawthorne saw her husband having sex with another woman, she became so mad she smashed his car to pieces. The judge ordered them to split to the income when they sell their house equally and ordered Helen to pay alimony because supposedly he supposedly supported her career by being a house husband. Rather than give him a dime, Helen runs down to Ft. Lauderdale, going from a six figure job to a series of dead end positions that she receives remittance for under the table.

Her latest job is as a salesperson at the posh Millicent's Bridal Salon but Helen discovers that weddings bring out the worst in people. Kiki is a rich mother of the bride who is determined to out shine her daughter on her wedding day. Kiki makes enemies wherever she goes as she believes her money insulates her from taking responsibility for her actions. On the day of the wedding Kiki is found murdered in a closet and Helen has to find out who the killer is because she is the police's number one suspect.

JUST MURDERED is a hilarious chick-lit mystery where the bride and groom get married despite the fact that Kiki fails to attend. When her body is discovered, there are a host of suspects who would have liked to kill Kiki from the chauffer who was used as a stud to the owner of the bridal store who hasn't been paid for the gowns, accessories and the daughter who despised her mother. Readers will find themselves laughing out loud when Helen subtly tries to question the suspects, all of whom look at her as the hired help.

Harriet Klausner

Ruth Rendell and P.D. James write murder mysteries that are dead serious. M.C. Beaton (real name Marion Chesney) writes mysteries that are tinged with humor. Elaine Viets writes humor with a touch of mystery
added. At least this is so with her "dead-end job" series two of which I have read so far. Viets lived and
worked in St. Louis, Missouri before moving to Florida. So did her sleuth in this series, Helen Hawthorne. Helen is educated and had a high paying job in St. Louis; but she is now on the lam in Florida avoiding 'justice' back at home for reasons the reader will sympathize with. She takes dead-end, 'off the books' jobs in order to keep a low profile. In Just Murdered she works at a bridal salon where she meets a certain 'Kiki' Shenrad who is mother of a bride. Kiki is also the soon-to-be murder victim. We know early on about the moral character of Kiki. On pg. 2 readers learn that she wears no panties. On pg. 5 we learn that her pubic hair is shaped into a dollar sign.

Helen Hawthorne feels that she must solve the murder mystery in order to avoid being herself a prime
suspect. This she does after various twists and turns in the story.

Having lived in St. Louis and Florida myself I can say that Viets accurately if humorously describes some of
the mores of citizens of both places. Speaking of St. Louis, when we both lived there I always enjoyed
reading her columns in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, before she took up murder mystery writing.

Because reviews are subjective I shall set out my pre-existing biases. I prefer the works of Georges Simenon,
Colin Dexter, and the aforementioned P.D. James and Ruth Rendell. Were I rating Viets' work as pure
mystery writing I would give Just Murdered a 2 or thereabouts. Were I rating it as pure humor and for excellence of style I would give it a 5. Comparing Viets' work with my preferred mystery authors' work product is admittedly like comparing apples to oranges; but this explanation is the best I can give for my rating of 3 stars. It might help to say that I have already bought more of her books and expect to enjoy
reading them for the humor they contain.

Many years ago I enjoyed Elaine Viets' columns in the local St. Louis newspaper and I was delighted to find her talents had expanded into fun mystery fiction. The "dead-end jobs" series is funny and engaging and always good for a quick read. This, the 4th in the series i think, has really developed. The characters are more real and believable and because of that I care more about them. I'm looking forward to the next!

These lite-mystery series books are a delightful change of pace from the usual books I read. This book moved along swiftly with just the right balance of intrigue and humor. I really enjoyed this story, felt sorry for Desiree, and did not figure out the crime until the solution was revealed!

This may be the 5th or 6th of the Helen Hawthorne series that I've read so far. I love the characters and the humor in each book. So I was looking forward to "Just Murdered". Since there were so many elaborately written reviews I will touch on a few highlights.
Unfortunately, this book did not measure up to the standard set in the previous books by Elaine Viets. I found it a bit uninteresting and routine. Who the murderer could be was quite a line up since Kiki (mother of the bride) was hideously awful.
I did not enjoy Phil (Helen's beau) allowing his ex-wife to move into his apartment. It was totally unrealistic since he had been an undercover agent for so long-Phil was definitely presented as the last person that could be taken advantage of by an ex.
Thankfully, Helen's landlady, Margery, remained as colorful both in words and wardrobe as before. She's one of the characters I look forward to.
The con artists that move into apartment 2C is getting old. It may be time to create another scenario.

I have 2 other books in the Dead End series that I will be reading and hoping that I can get back to the interesting pace that this series held before for me.
Ellen

I am a mother of the bride for the third (and last!) time, and I didn't recognize ANY of the brides or the mothers with the exception of LaTonya & Dorcas. Five days ago my daughter, her sisters (the bridesmaids), and I went to Priscilla of Boston, as her gown had come in and her sisters needed to be measured. Everything went smoothly and beautifully. There were other brides there, but I didn't hear a single angry word or any irrational demands (like the matching carpet!). Maybe that's because this was McLean, VA, and not FL. However, my experiences with all three were nothing like any of the ones described, except for LaTonya & her mother Dorcas (I did NOT break out into song, however!).

Aside from that, I enjoyed the book. I think Phil was stupid to let Kendra stay with him. I think Margery is great--wish I had a friend like her. I'm not sure why they chose Richard III as the play--Luke should have been Romeo or Benedick or a romantic hero--even Hamlet.

And I don't understand why Helen doesn't open up to Sarah. She's a true friend who would understand & help her. I don't see why she thinks she'll be brought back to St. Louis in handcuffs, either.

However, I do enjoy these books. I've read all of the Mystery Shopper and all of the earlier Dead End Jobs, and I've enjoyed them. I am about to start Murder Unleashed. I just think that there's too much suspension of disbelief asked for here. And not all brides are Bridezillas--none of my daughters were (nor Platinum Brides, for that matter).

In this latest Dead-End Job installment, series heroine, Helen Hawthorne, finds herself up to her neck in trouble when she ends up, horrors of horrors, on the suspect list of South Florida's latest society murder.

Helen's latest dead-end job is at an upscale bridal boutique, Millicent's Bridal Salon. For once, Helen's boss turns out to be not only a savvy businesswoman, but also a relatively nice one that Helen can admire. The same, however, cannot be said for most of the clients that frequent the store, and the hateful mother of the bride-to-be, Kiki Shenrad, in particular. Obnoxious, demanding, attention grabbing and a sex maniac, Kiki wants the best -- not for her only daughter (the mousy and chinless Desiree) -- but for herself. As Helen watches with fascinated horror, Kiki manages to offend everyone from Helen's boss, Millicent, to the groom-to-be, to Kiki's ex-husband (and Desiree's father), to Helen herself; but the last thing Helen expected was to come across Kiki dead body stuffed in a closet at the church on the very day of the wedding, the day after Kiki had threatened to have Helen fired. With her fingerprints at the scene of the crime, and the police taking more than a casual interest in her, Helen knows that she has to solve this murder before the police can uncover the secret past she's running from...

I enjoyed "Just Married" even though it was not, in my opinion the best Dead-End installment. And this was not because "Just Married" possessed a boring storyline or was badly written. To the contrary. I just thought that the author had spent too much time on Helen's problem with her boy friend, Phil. And while I appreciated that this added to the texture of the novel, and allowed us to understand better how much Helen had gone through before her momentous move from St. Louis, and how much she had suffered, and everything had just made a little leery about trusting men too much, I really wanted for Helen to buckle down, follow the clues and question the many suspects alibis and motives. On the whole, though, "Just Murdered" was an enjoyable, relatively fast paced and absorbing 3 1/2 star read.