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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Yay for a good Christmas mystery!, November 6, 2008
This review is from: Murder With All the Trimmings: Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper (Mass Market Paperback)
I have all of Elaine Viets mystery shopper and dead end job mysteries and I love them all. I have to say by far, this is the best of the mystery shopper series. I have noticed that more and more mystery series are going for holiday themes, i.e. Joanna Carl's The Chocolate Snowman Murders and Shirley Murphy's 2007 Cat Deck the Halls Joe Grey Mystery. I cannot speak for the Murphy mystery as I have not read it yet, but I can safely say Viets beats out Carl's Snowman Murders for the better holiday mystery.
Josie Marcus is a loveable protaganist as a single mom and amateur sleuth and the recurring cast of characters is what holds the wonderful series together. In this book, Josie is soured on Christmas because she feels that she has been looking at holiday decorations since Labor Day, but when she is ordered to mystery shop two of the three holiday stores that have cropped up or lose her job, she does what any good mystery shopper would do, sucks it up, hopes for the best and brings a witness. The second shop is owned by her current boyfriend's rather colorful ex who would be more at home in a Halloween store than a Christmas shop. The experience is exactly what Josie expects and she writes an honest report, which as expected complicates everything. Viets doesn't stop there, she adds Josie's daughter's father into the mix who has recently been released from Canadian prison, where he has been serving a sentence for drug dealing.
What I love about the book, besides that it's Christmas-y, is that even though there are several complex issues being addressed, it never gets messy that it feels like Viets forgets what she's doing and the plot never bogs down. The end of the book is wrapped up like a tidy Christmas package and leaves me waiting eagerly for the next book in series, just as it should. If you're a fan of the mystery shopper series, you definitely want to add this to your collection and if you're just starting, I suggest you begin with the first book in the series and I promise you'll be clamoring for this one.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not Good, January 15, 2009
This review is from: Murder With All the Trimmings: Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper (Mass Market Paperback)
Sometimes a book is like a car accident -- it's so bad that you just can't tear your eyes away from it. 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. There was really no mystery, because you knew from the start who was guilty. And the murder that did happen took over 100 pages into the book to actually occur. 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). Mike's daughter, and the way Josie dealt with her (or rather didn't deal with her) were juvenile and annoying. However, the worst part was the dialogue, which was unbelivably stilted and silly. 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. Did Elsie get her store back once the culprit confessed? Did Nate's father go back to Canada and will he continue a relationship with Amelia? What happened to the "Frosty the Deadman" dude?
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. It's a shame because I loved her Francesca Vierling series.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mystery with holiday trimmings, December 14, 2008
This review is from: Murder With All the Trimmings: Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper (Mass Market Paperback)
I'd probably be a card-carrying grinch if they issued cards for that, but I enjoyed this Christmas-themed mystery in Elaine Viets' mystery shopper series. Protagonist Josie Marcus is smart, funny, and likable, character flaws and all. She's raising her nine year old daughter Amelia on her slim earnings as a mystery shopper, with help from her mother who lives in the other half of her St. Louis duplex.
In this book, some of Josie's past decisions cause trouble at home. She lied to Amelia by saying Amelia's dad Nate was dead, when in fact he had been imprisoned in Canada for drug dealing by the time the girl was born. She's shocked when a very live, and actively alcoholic, Jake turns up on their doorstep. Amelia is thrilled with Jake and alienated by Josie's lies, and Josie's terrified by Jake's threats to take Amelia back to Canada.
In the meantime Josie's hunky plumber boyfriend has his own troubles. His skanky ex-girlfriend, the mother of his sullen sociopathic teenaged daughter, has opened a sleazy Christmas store franchise which is doomed to fail, as it's next to two competing, and better, stores.
Josie's mystery shopping assignments, her boyfriend's bad news ex and offspring, Jake and his scary drug dealing associates, and the suddenly rebellious Amelia, come together in a series of events which include obscene Christmas ornaments, commercial sabotage, fundamentalist pickets at the sleazy Christmas store, antifreeze in the chocolate sauce, and murder.
Josie doesn't always make the best decisions, but she's brave and resourceful. Viets creates some real suspense with this story, which was a very enjoyable read on a cold winter's night.
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