Customer Reviews

Murder With Reservations: A Dead-End Job Mystery

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

 

 

This Dead-End Job Mystery was the best one I have read so far. It had everything: suspense, intrigue, mystery, revenge, and romance.

Helen works as a hotel maid. I gained a lot of insight into this thankless occupation. After a couple of weeks on the job, Helen discovers a dead body in the hotel dumpster. To add to this stress, her ex-husband, Rob, has tracked her down.

The support of her ladlady and boyfriend help make everything all right.

You will enjoy this book!

This series just keeps getting better. Murder with Reservation's has Viets' trademark humor, with a just slightly harder edge than in past series books.

Helen's peril is more immediate in this book since her ex, Rob, is actually tracking her down. He checks into the very hotel where Helen is employed as a maid. Helen has to worry about her ex, the police, and the murderer.

One of the best things about this book is that Helen's character seems more developed and we see how caring she can be, particularly in the scene where she finds Rhonda and in the one where she thanks the officer involved in the shooting.

There's some foreshadowing in this book that I suspect will be resolved in the next book. I'm really looking forward to the next one.

I have been reading all of these from Elaine Viets. I really am enjoying this Dead-End Job series. Here character is not the perfect woman and makes her more realistic than most.

Her Mystery Shopper series is quite good too.

I have been a resident of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for twenty-one years so I was interested in reading "Murder with Reservations" by Elaine Viets. She sets her mystery in the town and mentions a few actual places in her book which belongs to the murder is mirthful school of mysteries. Her heroine Helen Hawthorne is a maid in Sybil's Full Moon Hotel. The patrons all seem to be slobs who leave the rooms in unspeakable filth. She and the other maids open the rooms to find a deluge of garbage.
Helen is on the lam from her money-grubbing, womanizing ex-husband Rob which seems strange because she's broke, a loser, and in a dead-end job (the book is part of a group called the Dead-End Job Mystery Series). He darn near tracks her down (he's a persistent devil), but it's hard to believe she's a worthwhile target for the greedy bum.
The style is breezy, smart-alecky, gaggy with two sets of odd-ball characters: one Helen's co-workers at the hotel and the other her buddies at her apartment house who spend most of their time out by the pool boozing it up. Helen has a knack for finding murder victims, and when she latches onto the killers, they seem all too anxious to make full confessions to her.
Viets didn't give me enough views of my home town (I wanted to hear more about the real joints I go to), and she didn't crack me up quite as much as I'd hoped. It's light reading, fast-paced, and won't tax your brain.
We've had so many writers trying to mine the nutty terrain of South Florida, that it's become increasingly difficult to find novel and new stuff to say about this zany part of the country. The place is more bizarre, nuttier and fruitier than any writer has been able to encapsulate. Maybe it's time to go after Hoboken.

I have greatly enjoyed this series by Elaine Viets BUT this book annoyed me. Helen has always been smart and tough in the past but she acts like a silly, confused twit in this book. Her actions really ticked me off a few times and I had to put down the book. Why would she refuse help from the current love of her life - when he is able to make her problem go away? Or at least make it better. She is intelligent and educated yet is unable to speak to the police with any common sense or articulation.

I am starting "Clubbed to Death" right now. I hope Helen grows a brain - and a backbone - in the next installment.

Although I've read and enjoyed all the books, I can't understand Helen at all. With everything her ex-husband Rob put her through, she still tries to save his life (or so she thinks). Phil advises her to go and fight, but she won't. And I honestly believe everyone with half a brain could see all of the surprises (Craig!) coming. The only thing that surprised me at all was at the end, and I won't spoil it, but what she did was the fair, just thing. To do otherwise would have caused great harm even though it would have been "right."

Where has her friend Sarah been in the last two books?

I think it's great that this latest book tied in to an earlier one--but to say more would be spoiling.

While this installment was better than the last few, this is still a very silly series, especially in the romance department.

There is no chemistry whatsoever between Helen and Phil, and their romantic scenes always seem forced...such as when Phil picks Helen up at work amid a throng of TV reporters and she starts trying to take off his clothes as soon as she gets in the car. I also find the dialogue to be very trite, which definitely detracts from the story.

I've enjoyed this series since the beginning and this one stands up to the quality of the others. I especially liked the teaser to the next book.