CANR
WORK TITLE: A SCARLET DEATH
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.elaineviets.com/
CITY: Fort Lauderdale
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CANR 309
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in St. Louis, MO; daughter of Henry Frederick (an electrician) and Elaine (a homemaker) Viets; married Don Crinklaw (a writer, journalist, and actor), August 6, 1971.
EDUCATION:Attended University of Missouri, St. Louis, 1968-70; University of Missouri, Columbia, B.J., 1972.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, freelance journalist, media host, and educator. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, MO, fashion writer, beginning 1972, became youth page editor, and then columnist, beginning 1979; KMOV-TV, St. Louis, host of Viets Beat (television program); host of Travel Holiday magazine (syndicated radio show); United Media in New York, Dead-End Jobs Show, Radio Ear Network, host; Florida Writers Academy, faculty; worked at a bookstore in Hollywood, FL; teaches writing seminars.
AVOCATIONS:Reading, walking.
MEMBER:Mystery Writers of America (president of Florida chapter, 2000; member of national board, two year term as Director at Large, 2015, current membership chair; Sisters in Crime (former member of national board); International Thriller Writers.
AWARDS:Local Emmy Award, St. Louis, MO, 1990; named Florida author of the year, Pompano Beach Friends of the Library; one of sixteen Florida must read books, for Shop till You Drop; Agatha Award for best short story, 2005, and Anthony Award, both for “Wedding Knife”; Lefty Award for the funniest mystery published in 2007, 2008; St. Louis Media Halls of Fame inductee, 2011; one of the top ten cozies of 2015, Suspense magazine, for Checked Out.
WRITINGS
Syndicated columnist, 1997-2000. Contributor to anthologies, including Blood on Their Hands, edited by Lawrence Block, Berkley (New York, NY), 2003; Show Business Is Murder, edited by Stuart Kaminsky, Berkley (New York, NY), 2005; Drop-Dead Blonde, Signet (New York, NY), 2005; Crimes by Moonlight: Mysteries form the Dark Side, edited by Charlaine Harris, Berkley Prime Crime (Berkley, CA), 2010; Many Bloody Returns, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner, Barnes & Noble Books; .44 Caliber Funk, edited by Gary Phillips and Robert Randisi, Down & Out Books, 2016. Contributor to periodicals, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.
Backstab, Rubout, The Pink Flamingo Murders, and Doc in the Box have been published in audio format, read by Viets, Americana Publishing; Viets read her essay “An Unimportant Town” for Spirit of the American Voice, Americana Publishing.
SIDELIGHTS
Novelist, journalist, and columnist Elaine Viets is the author of several well-received crime and mystery series, ranging from dark and hard-boiled to lighthearted and cozy. A longtime resident of St. Louis, she wrote for the St. Louis Dispatch and hosted a prime-time show on local public television. She has also hosted radio programs. Along with her husband, likewise a writer, Viets has made Florida her home.
"Dead-End Jobs" Series
Viets’s “Dead-End Jobs” mysteries are anchored in the world of low-pay, little-advancement jobs, often in the service industry, that form the background for series regular Helen Hawthorne’s sleuthing. Viets researched these jobs firsthand, taking positions and performing tasks that would add depth and verisimilitude to her storytelling.
In the first book of the series, Shop till You Drop, high-powered businesswoman Helen finds an unpleasant surprise when she comes home one day: her stay-at-home husband and the next-door neighbor in a romantic clinch. Overwhelmed with anger, she takes a crowbar to her husband’s car, then later finds herself forced to pay alimony to the cad because of his position as househusband. Bitterly refusing to do so, Helen quits her high-paid job in business and goes into hiding, fleeing to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and working low-pay, cash-only jobs in seedy shops and dubious businesses, just to make ends meet.
In Just Murdered, the fourth book in the series, Helen has found a job in an upscale bridal salon, but working at Millicent’s is no more fun than the other jobs she has had. Weddings, it seems, turn otherwise normal and pleasant people into monstrous jerks. Kiki, for example, is a rich mother determined to attract more attention to herself than her daughter on her daughter’s wedding day. Obnoxious and almost universally disliked, Kiki makes enemies with abandon, oblivious to the distress she inflicts, shielded behind her money. When the wedding day rolls around, Kiki is found murdered and stuffed into a closet. Few people mourn this turn of events, but Helen feels the pressure to dive in and solve the case, especially since the police consider her the prime suspect in the killing. A reviewer in MBR Bookwatch called the novel a “hilarious chick-lit mystery.”
Murder Unleashed, the fifth book in the “Dead-End Job” series, finds Helen as a worker at an exclusive pet boutique. With a clientele that includes some of the area’s richest, and craziest, dog owners, Helen has a challenge just keeping up with the demands of people who see their pets as members of the family.
The star dog-groomer at the Pampered Pet Boutique, Jonathan, is a local celebrity and object of desire for the city’s women, but he is also petty and prone to outbursts of anger. When Helen drives out to the gated community where Tammie Grimsbie lives to deliver the woman’s newly buffed and shined Yorkie, she discovers Grimsbie dead, stabbed with a pair of dog-grooming shears. Terrified and panicked, Helen flees the scene without reporting the crime. Later, a confrontation with Willoughby Barclay ends with Helen and boutique owner Jeff being threatened with a lawsuit over letting Barclay’s prize “labradoodle” Barkley get dognapped. When Barclay also ends up a victim of murder, Helen takes up the case in order to find out who is slaying the dogs’ best friends. “Viets has a wry way with humor,” commented a Kirkus Reviews contributor, who concluded that “the snapshots of lunatic dog owners are priceless.”
Subsequent additions to the series include Murder with Reservations, Clubbed to Death, and Killer Cuts. In the latter, Helen is working as an assistant for high-end salon owner Miguel Angel. They are on location for the high-profile wedding between television celebrity and gossip blogger King Oden and his pregnant fiancée, Honey. Shortly after they take their vows, King drowns in the pool. Miguel is accused of the murder when heroin is found in his makeup kit. Helen believes her boss to be innocent, and she believes Kingman’s ex-wives may be responsible. To Helen, Honey is also a suspect. As she furthers her investigation, Helen begins to receive threatening letters in the mail. The letters may be connected to a dark secret in Helen’s past, one that she hopes to escape by marrying her boyfriend.
Oline H. Cogdill, writing in Sun-Sentinel, commended the plot, noting: “While humor is a vital part of Elaine Viets’s lively ‘Dead-End’ series, the Fort Lauderdale author also works in contemporary issues.” A Publishers Weekly critic found that “Viets keeps the action popping until the cliff-hanging ending,” while Gloria Feit in Reviewer’s Bookwatch declared: “I found this a delightfully breezy, well-crafted book, and a perfect beach read.” Marlene Pyle, writing in the online GenReview, was equally impressed. Commenting on Viets’s tendency to work in the menial jobs that she writes about, Pyle stated: “Few immerse themselves as deeply into the lives of their characters as Elaine Viets.” The reviewer went on to observe: “I applaud Ms. Viets for her in-depth research. It makes for a very realistic character. The story line is rich with detail, and smart, snappy dialogue.”
Half-Price Homicide, the ninth “Dead-End Jobs” novel, finds Helen working in an upscale consignment shop. Her boss, store owner Vera Salinda, learns that one of their clients, Chrissy Martlet, was bludgeoned to death with a Limoges Pineapple. He body was then hanged from the ceiling with a Gucci Scarf. Christy, the wife of a renowned real-estate developer, was killed right after she tried to sell her belongings to Vera. A Kirkus Reviews critic was somewhat ambivalent, asserting that “Helen’s ninth is oddly shaped, with an unnecessary twist that defies logic.” On the other hand, a Publishers Weekly critic announced that the author “doesn’t waste a word in this tight, fast-paced installment as she deftly balances comedy and tragedy.”
Helen remarries, and Pumped for Murder follows her and her new husband, Phil, as they form a private investigation firm together. Their first case leads Helen to work undercover as a gym receptionist. She spies on realtor Bryan Minars, hoping to catch him in the affair his wife suspects he is having. Then Helen and Phil begin looking into a cold-case murder that was billed as a suicide twenty-five years ago. Lauding the story, a Publishers Weekly reviewer called it “a smooth blend of humor and homicide” and dubbed Pumped for Murder “another satisfying outing.”
Helen’s and Phil’s P.I. company has taken off, and Helen has finally found a real career. In Final Sail, Helen pretends to be a spiritual advisor to an elderly man. The man’s daughter, Helen’s client, believes the man’s new wife is a gold digger. Helen also pretends to be a yacht stewardess as she hunts down a smuggler. Her roommate on the ship goes missing and Helen suspects foul play. “Doubling the mysteries doesn’t really double the fun in Viets’ convoluted eleventh,” a Kirkus Reviews critic complained, but a Publishers Weekly contributor praised the novel, dubbing it “an eye-opening expose of spoiled yachters and the not-so-glamorous lives of their crews.”
The plot in Viet’s twelfth “Dead-End Jobs” installment, Board Stiff, centers on Jim Sundusky, the owner of a paddleboard rental shop. Someone has been sabotaging Jim’s boards and trying to drive him out of business. Then one of Jim’s customers, Ceci Odell, dies in the ocean while using one of his boards. Suspects include Ceci’s abusive husband, Jim’s disgruntled ex-employee, city officials looking to close Jim’s shop, and several of Jim’s competitors. As Helen tries to solve the case, a mysterious figure steps forward and tries to blackmail Helen, claiming that he has information about her and her first husband. The truth puts Helen’s marriage to Phil in danger. Viets commented on the Mysteristas Web site: “I wanted to write about Florida’s tourist industry.” She was inspired to focus on beachside rentals by a newspaper article, and she told the Mysteristas interviewer: “I saw a story in the Sun-Sentinel about how the competition is so cutthroat some of these companies sabotage one another, especially before spring break. It was just a short step from cutthroat to murder in my book.”
As a Kirkus Reviews columnist pointed out, Board Stiff “proves that moving Helen from dead-end jobs into full-time employment does nothing to stifle her quirky good humor.” A Publishers Weekly writer was also impressed, declaring: “Viets shines at evoking Florida’s vibrant landscape and even more colorful characters.”
In the thirteenth entry in the series, Catnapped!, Helen and her husband, Phil, still PIs, try to recover a show cat named January’s Jubilee Justine. It seems as though the cat is being held by Mortimer Barrymore, a financial adviser who has a shared custody arrangement with his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Trish, but who has neglected to return the cat to her. When Helen and Phil discover Mort’s body at his Fort Lauderdale estate—the cause of death is a blow to the head with the cat’s Zen cat tower—Justine is missing, and Trish is the prime suspect. Helen is certain that Trish is not the murderer. To confirm her belief, she takes a job as a cat groomer, hoping thereby to gain information about the cat and possible other suspects. In the meantime, the life of Helen and Phil at their apartment building is disrupted when Zach, the ex-husband of their landlady, Margery Flax, unexpectedly appears—then turns up dead, with Margery the chief suspect in his murder. A Publishers Weekly reviewer characterized the novel as “lively” and called it a “witty cozy.” Gloria Feit, writing for Reviewer’s Bookwatch, found the characters “wonderfully drawn,” the resolution “very satisfying,” and the book “a perfect beach read, and most enjoyable.”
A Publishers Weekly reviewer called the fourteenth installment in the series, Checked Out, “snappy.” The novel has Helen trying to locate a John Singer Sargeant watercolor painting said to be worth a million dollars. The painting may be hidden in the pages of a book at a local library, so Helen follows her usual practice of taking a job, although in this case she offers to volunteer. The Flora Park Library is a private institution housed in the home of Flora Portland, a society ingénue during the Gilded Age. There, Helen becomes embroiled in multiple shenanigans, while her husband, Phil, investigates the theft of a golf cart and a jeweled necklace. Phil finds himself having to deal with two wealthy and spoiled young women, Bree and Chloe Coakley, along with their dodgy boyfriends.
Discussing her series protagonist on a Mystery File Web site interview with Pamela James, Viets remarked: “Helen is very much like her readers. She’s smart, she’s savvy and she’s been around. She’s made some mistakes, but that doesn’t stop her from enjoying life or trying new things.” The author added: “Right now, Helen plans to stay in Florida, but remember, she’s on the run. She doesn’t know if some day she’ll have to take off for Arizona or New Mexico or even California. But for now, wacky, slightly wicked Florida seems to suit her well. … The one thing Helen has learned in her new life is to take time to toast the sunset. It’s a Florida ritual to sit out by the pool at the end of the day with your friends. Helen and I hope you will all be able to toast the sunset in your own way in your own home town.”
"Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper" Series
In 2005 Viets launched the “Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper” series with Dying in Style. Numerous other titles in the series followed: High Heels Are Murder, Accessory to Murder, Murder with All the Trimmings, The Fashion Hound Murders, An Uplifting Murder, Death on a Platter, and Murder Is a Piece of Cake. Two later additions to the series are Fixing to Die and A Dog Gone Murder.
As the series title suggests, Josie Marcus works as a mystery shopper; her bailiwick is the St. Louis area, but in her spare time she investigates murders. By the time readers arrive at Fixing to Die, Josie has been married to Dr. Ted Scottsmeyer, a veterinarian, for forty-four days, and the couple has just purchased a Tudor Revival cottage in need of extensive repairs from Ted’s partner, Dr. Christine Cormac. Until now, Josie had been camping out in her mother’s house with her twelve-year-old daughter, Amelia, while Ted occupied a home that he rented. Their new home has become available because its former occupant, Rain, Christine’s wayward sister, has abandoned it and, according to an e-mail Christine received from her, is relocating to an ashram. But as the repairs get under way, workers raze an old gazebo and discover a body, which turns out to be that of Rain. The detective leading the investigation identifies Christine as the main suspect and arrests her. Josie is less certain and resolves to find the real murderer. Gloria Feit, writing for Reviewer’s Bookwatch, concluded: “An interesting murder mystery with several possible culprits, the book makes for a perfect beach read.”
In A Dog Gone Murder, Josie has to use her skills as a mystery shopper to reconnoiter three St. Louis-area doggy day care centers to determine which will be awarded the coveted Certified Pet Care Center seal. One of the targets of her inquiry is Uncle Bob’s Doggy Day Camp, but Josie quickly learns that Uncle Bob, despite all of his many television commercials to the contrary, cares little about the animals and even less about his employees. Meanwhile, Josie deals with some of the same issues that confront the parents of any preteen daughter; in her case, her daughter Amelia, a scholarship student at the prestigious Barrington School, is looking forward to attending her first real party. Complications arise in connection with Josie’s mother, who is renting out an apartment to Frank Hyzy, who, Josie suspects, is smitten with her mother. Frank, it turns out, has recently taken a job at, of all places, Uncle Bob’s, but on the day Josie goes to the doggy day camp to investigate, she learns that Frank has quit his job. When Josie enters Uncle Bob’s office to interview him, she discovers him on the floor, unconscious. The police immediately suspect Frank of having poisoned his boss, but after Uncle Bob dies, Josie is not convinced and sets her sights on finding the real killer. Once again, Gloria Feit, reviewing the novel for Reviewer’s Bookwatch, concluded that “the author has given us another interesting murder mystery with several possible culprits.”
[open new]
“Angela Richman, Death Investigator” Series
To gear up for her next series, Viets completed the professional-oriented Medicolegal Death Investigators Training Course at St. Louis University’s School of Medicine. The first “Angela Richman, Death Investigator” book is Brain Storm, for which Viets drew on her personal experiences enduring a succession of strokes, a coma, and brain surgery around 2007. The doctor she first saw about symptoms like migraines doubted the seriousness of the episode and sent her home, only for the strokes to occur the following day. With protagonist Angela also a stroke survivor—and as such a partly unreliable narrator—the series is set in fictional Chouteau County, west of St. Louis, where the wealthy live in Chouteau Forest and the laboring class live in Toonerville. Raised in an upper-class enclave because her parents were caretakers there, Angela now works as the death investigator in the local coroner’s office. When prestigious Dr. Porter Gravois dismisses her serious symptoms, Angela is only saved from serious brain damage when Dr. Jeb Travis Tritt, poor reputation aside, responds to her strokes with urgency and care. With her mind compromised nonetheless, Angela must work through moments of confusion to solve the crime when, Dr. Gravois, following an argument with Dr. Tritt, dies of apparent poisoning, making Dr. Tritt the prime suspect. Grateful he saved her life, and sure of his innocence, Angela aims to overcome incompetent detectives and corrupt administrators to solve the crime.
A Kirkus Reviews writer suggested that with its “complicated heroine,” Viets’s kickstarter for this series “carries more heft than her earlier cozies.” In Booklist, Barbara Bibel remarked that Viets “builds her unusual premise into a compelling thriller that moves quickly and builds suspense steadily.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer described Brain Storm as “well-paced” and “darkly humorous” and appreciated how Angela’s “endearing, spirited, and resilient humanity resonates on the page.”
The third “Angela Richman, Death Investigator” novel is A Star Is Dead, revolving around Jessica Gray, a starlet from the sixties still touring a one-woman show in her seventies. On hand to support hairdresser friend Mario, Angela is repulsed by Jessica’s show, which involves ridiculing three homeless woman. Then she becomes a secondhand witness to Jessica’s sudden death in her limo. Although Jessica’s makeup artist, assistant, and understudy all despise her, the faithful Mario gets pinned with the crime, leaving Angela to work connections in order to clear his name. A Kirkus Reviews writer observed, “Despite a whopping big clue, Angela takes her sweet time solving the case, rescuing her friend Mario by a hair.” In Library Journal, Lesa Holstine suggested that “fans of forensic mysteries will overlook the sleuth’s questionable actions in this dramatic story.”
Although investigation is not strictly part of Angela’s job, Death Grip finds her compelled to act when the body of high-school track star Terri Gibbons turns up months after she disappeared on a run. Playboy Briggs Bellerive is implicated by the victim herself, in a note found in her shoe, but Viets will have to risk her job–as will her best friend, Detective Jace Budewitz–to bring him to justice. Meanwhile, still grieving her husband’s death, Angela sees promise in her feelings for Officer Christopher Ferretti. A Kirkus Reviews writer declared that in Death Grip “Viets produces chills with a murder hunt turned on its head.”
Life without Parole revolves around the murder of a real-estate mogul, with suspicion falsely falling on his young wife, who was reared in mobile-home park. A Kirkus Reviews writer suggested, “Viets’ fans should enjoy her latest corpse-filled outing.” In Late for His Own Funeral, a flashy, philandering businessman becomes a celebrity when he crashes his own funeral: the person who crashed his Porsche was a thief. When he crashes his new Ferrari for real, his wronged wife is wrongly blamed, and Angela steps up. A Kirkus Reviews writer found in this volume a “catchy hook, draggy investigation, and a solution from out of left field.” Turning up dead in The Dead of Night are Trey and Lydia, the high bidders in a Halloween benefit auction, which won them the chance to stay in the local university’s Cursed Crypt. Trey was cleared of a rape charge thanks to girlfriend Lydia’s testimony, so he had no shortage of enemies for Angela and Jace to look into. A Kirkus Reviews writer suggested, “Allowing her heroine to be both methodical and intuitive should endear Viets to fans of feisty female sleuths.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded that, notwithstanding the “wobbly plot and wonky motives,” “fans of the intrepid and relatively sensible Angela … will find plenty to like.”[close new]
Nonfiction
Viets is also a writer of nonfiction, and in How to Commit Monogamy: A Lighthearted Look at Long-Term Love, she addresses a serious topic in an amusing way. Married to the same man for more than twenty-five years, Viets draws from her personal experience as well as research to explain the many joyful merits of a healthy, stable, monogamous relationship.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented that “the author goes a long way toward clearing monogamy’s bad name.”
Author Comments
Viets told CA: “I live on the ocean in Florida. Every morning I take a long walk on the beach and think about killing people. Writing mysteries is a relaxing life.
“I am a mystery addict. I read four or five a week. My favorite authors include early Sue Grafton, Lawrence Block, and Dorothy L. Sayers. I write the kind of book I like to read: fast, funny, tightly written, and well plotted.
“My books are known for their accurate depiction of modern newspapers. I’ve spent more than twenty-five years in the newspaper business, and the evil editors of my books are based on composites of editors who can be found at any newspaper. My ideas for my mysteries are based on events that I covered as a reporter, from a transvestite beauty pageant to the Leather and Lace Bikers Society Ball.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, July 1, 2016, Barbara Bibel, review of Brain Storm, p. 34; April 15, 2020, Barbara Bibel, review of A Star Is Dead, p. 21.
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2006, review of Murder Unleashed, p. 266; March 15, 2007, review of Murder with Reservations; March 15, 2010, review of Half-Price Homicide; May 15, 2011, review of Pumped for Murder; May 1, 2012, review of Final Sail; April 15, 2013, review of Board Stiff; June 1, 2016, review of Brain Storm; February 1, 2020, review of A Star Is Dead; December 15, 2020, review of Death Grip; September 1, 2021, review of Life without Parole; May 15, 2022, review of Late for His Own Funeral; April 1, 2023, review of The Dead of Night; March 15, 2024, review of A Scarlet Death.
Library Journal, June 15, 1997, Elizabeth Caulfield Felt, review of How to Commit Monogamy: A Lighthearted Look at Long-Term Love, p. 87; September 15, 1997, Ravonne A. Green, review of How to Commit Monogamy, p. 120; May 1, 2008, review of Clubbed to Death, p. 45; April, 2020, Lesa Holstine, review of A Star Is Dead, p. 68.
MBR Bookwatch, April, 2005, review of Just Murdered.
Publishers Weekly, June 2, 1997, review of How to Commit Monogamy, p. 63; June 12, 2000, review of Doc in the Box, p. 58; March 6, 2006, review of Murder Unleashed, p. 49; March 17, 2008, review of Clubbed to Death, p. 53; March 23, 2009, review of Killer Cuts, p. 49; March 15, 2010, review of Half-Price Homicide, p. 40; March 28, 2011, review of Pumped for Murder, p. 40; October 10, 2011, review of Death on a Platter, p. 36; March 5, 2012, review of Final Sail, p. 51; April 15, 2013, review of Board Stiff, p. 46; March 24, 2014, review of Catnapped!, p. 61; March 30, 2015, review of Checked Out, p. 58; June 20, 2016, review of Brain Storm, p. 137; January 25, 2021, review of Death Grip, p. 45; February 6, 2023, review of The Dead of Night, p. 42.
Reviewer’s Bookwatch, September 1, 2009, Gloria Feit, review of Killer Cuts; June, 2014, Gloria Feit, review of Catnapped! July, 2014, Gloria Feit, February 21, 2016, review of Fixing to Die; July, 2015, Gloria Feit, review of A Dog Gone Murder.
St. Louis Journalism Review, February, 1996, Staci D. Kramer, “Viets-Post Marriage on the Rocks? Editor Woo Takes Over Negotiations,” p. 1; September, 1996, Burt St. John, “Viets’ Future with the Post Uncertain; She Continues to Build Syndication,” interview with Elaine Viets, p. 18.
Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL), May 4, 2009, Oline H. Cogdill, review of Killer Cuts.
ONLINE
Elaine Viets website, https://elaineviets.com (April 23, 2024).
GenReview, http://thegenreview.com/ (May 26, 2009), Marlene Pyle, review of Killer Cuts.
Momtrends, https://www.momtrends.com/ (May 5, 2016), Jennifer Vido, author interview.
Mysteristas, http://mysteristas.wordpress.com/ (May 23, 2013), author interview.
Mystery File, http://www.mysteryfile.com/ (December 7, 2013), Pamela James, author interview.
Mystery of Writing, https://www.themysteryofwriting.com/ (April 15, 2018), Elena Hartwell, “Elaine Viets: Thirty-Two Novels and Counting.”
Pen, Ink, and Crimes, https://sincne.wordpress.com/ (July 31, 2014), Lisa Haselton, “Not Quite Twenty Questions for Elaine Viets.”
St. Louis Public Radio website, https://www.stlpr.org/ (July 27, 2016), Kelly Moffitt, “St. Louis Author Elaine Viets Draws from Her Stroke Survival in New, Dark Mystery ‘Brain Storm.’”
About Elaine
Elaine's biography in three flavors
In 50 words
Award-winning mystery writer Elaine Viets returns to her hardboiled roots with her Angela Richman, Death Investigator series. Elaine's written 34 mysteries in four bestselling series: 4 Francesca Vierling novels, 15 Dead-End Job mysteries, 10 Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper novels and 4 Angela Richman mysteries. A Star Is Dead debuts in April.
In 100 words
Elaine Viets has written 34 mysteries in four series: the bestselling Dead-End Job series with South Florida PI Helen Hawthorne, the cozy Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper mysteries, and the dark Francesca Vierling mysteries. With the Angela Richman Death Investigator series, Elaine returns to her hardboiled roots and uses her experience as a stroke survivor and her studies at the Medicolegal Death Investigators Training Course. Elaine was a director at large for the Mystery Writers of America. She's a frequent contributor to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and anthologies edited by Charlaine Harris and Lawrence Block. Elaine won the Anthony, Agatha and Lefty Awards.
In 750 words
National bestselling mystery writer Elaine Viets completed the Medicolegal Death Investigator Training Course at the St. Louis University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Mo. This inspired her to write the Angela Richman, Death Investigator series: Brain Storm, Fire and Ashes, Ice Blonde (a novella), and A Star Is Dead, which debuts in the UK in December and the US in April 2020.
The New York Times Review of Books calls her Dead-End Job mysteries “clever,” and she’s received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly.
She has written 34 mysteries: Four hardboiled Francesca Vierling mysteries for Dell Books: Backstab, Rubout, The Pink Flamingo Murders, and Doc in the Box. These mysteries were also sold as audio books and Elaine narrated them.
The Art if Murder by Elaine VietsShe has written 15 Dead-End Job mysteries: Shop till You Drop, Murder Between the Covers, Dying to Call You, Just Murdered, Murder Unleashed, Murder with Reservations, Clubbed to Death, Killer Cuts, Half-Price Homicide, Pumped for Murder, Final Sail, Board Stiff, Catnapped!, Checked Out and The Art of Murder. The series went into hardcover at Murder Unleashed.
Her Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper series has ten novels: Dying in Style, High Heels Are Murder, Accessory to Murder, Murder with All the Trimmings, The Fashion Hound Murders, An Uplifting Murder, Death on a Platter, Murder Is a Piece of Cake, Fixing to Die and A Dog Gone Murder. Fixing to Die was nominated for a Barry Award in April, 2015.
Deal with the Devil and 13 Short Stories, a collection darkly humorous short stories, was published by Crippen & Landru. Her stories have appeared in anthologies including Mystery Writers of America presents Crimes by Moonlight: Mysteries from the Dark Side, edited by Charlaine Harris. Many Bloody Returns, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner, and Mystery Writers of America presents Blood on Their Hands, edited by Lawrence Block. Her short story “Vampire Hours” was reprinted in the Barnes & Noble anthology, Vampires in Love. She regularly writes short stories for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, including “Gotta Go” in the November 2015 AHMM.
The Agatha Award, named for the legendary Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, is one of the numerous awards Elaine has garnered. She also won the Anthony Award and the Lefty Award for Best Humorous Mystery. She’s been nominated for the Macavity Award, Barry Award, Anthony and Agatha Awards.
Elaine had speech training in New York with Ruth Franklin, director of both AFTRA and SAG, and voiced her own audio books for Americana Publishing.
She hosted the top-ranked half-hour Dead-End Jobs Radio Show on Radio Ear Network for two years.
She is a frequent guest on local, national and international TV and radio shows, including the Discovery Channel’s MythBusters, and Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know? show. Elaine also hosted the syndicated Travel-Holiday Radio Show and was a commentator for the National Public Radio station KWMU. She hosted a primetime television program, Viets Beat, for KMOV-TV in St. Louis and won two local Emmys. She was featured on National Public Radio station WLRN with Jeff “Dexter” Lindsay on Literary Florida.
Elaine was inducted into the St. Louis Media Halls of Fame in 2011. Her Dead-End Job series is taught in universities in the United States and Japan.
She is a popular speaker, and has been invited as a special guest of Lit in the Lou, a program to celebrate St. Louis’ literary achievements for its 250th birthday celebration. She was also a guest at the Vegas Valley Book Festival, Las Vegas, NV. She’s given two commencement addresses at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and is on the faculty of the Florida Writers Academy. She has taught writing seminars at Sleuthfest on Saturday in Sarasota, Florida; to Sisters in Crime chapters in Jacksonville, Florida, Richmond, Virginia, and Nashville, Tennessee. She's appeared on numerous panels at Malice Domestic, Bouchercon, the American Library Association, and Sleuthfest. She was Toastmaster at Malice Domestic, Left Coast Crime and the Missouri Writers’ Guild. Elaine was named one of the top One Hundred Women in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Elaine knows the book business from the ground up, and worked as a bookseller at Barnes & Noble for two years. She was a director at large on the National Board of the Mystery Writers of America, served on the board of Sisters in Crime, and is a past president of the Florida Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America. She lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with her husband, writer Don Crinklaw.
About Elaine
Hardboiled, with a blood chaser? Warm and cozy? Or funny and traditional, with all the clues, and some good laughs? My four mystery series have something for every reader.
I started dark with the Francesca Vierling mysteries, set at a newspaper. My Dead-End Job mysteries are funny and traditional. The Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper mysteries are sweetly cozy.
Now I'm going back to the dark side with Brain Storm and Fire and Ashes. I've started a dark series featuring Death Brain Storm by Elaine VietsInvestigator Angela Richman. Death investigators work for the medical examiner. They take charge of the body, photographing it, documenting the wounds, and more. The police investigate the rest of the crime scene.
Why return to this gritty world?
Because I was in the mood for hardheaded forensics. To return to the dark side, I took the Medicolegal Death Investigators Training Course for forensic professionals, given by St. Louis University's School of Medicine. The intense training gave me the latest forensic information.
Look at the agenda for one morning, taught by medical examiners and pathologists:
Gunshot wound fatalities, explosion-related deaths, motor vehicle fatalities and drowning. At lunch we watched a teen driving and alcohol video. After lunch was alcohol-related deaths, suicide, blunt-trauma fatalities and more.
I didn't want to write a dark series with the same old protagonists: the retired cop learning to live with his heart-wrenching divorce or the private eye who drinks to kill "the big hurt." Other writers have done those novels, and done them well.
Instead, I turned my fascination with death investigators into a series featuring DI Angela Richman. This is a one of a kind series. Janet Rudolph, head of Mystery Readers International, believes there are no other series featuring death investigators.
Angela lives in mythical Chouteau County, just west of St. Louis. The rich live in the town of Chouteau Forest, a bastion of old money. The workers live in Toonerville. But death doesn't discriminate between the rich and the poor. Angela works cases for the super-wealthy as well as the down-and-out. She believes the dead can talk, and it's her job to examine, photograph and document their bodies, so they can tell her when and how they died. The Angela Richman series is dark, but it's not as gruesome as Patricia Cornwell's novels. It's closer to Kathy Reichs's Tempe Brennan mysteries.
Brain Storm was the first Angela Richman mystery, published by Thomas & Mercer August 2. Fire and Ashes, the second Angela Richman death investigator mystery, is just out. Brain Storm is a deeply personal mystery, which reflects my own fight to survive six strokes and brain surgery.
Fire and Ashes, is a look at small town injustice and the fatal dangers of "junk science."
In the mood for a newspaper mystery? My first dark mystery series featured Francesca Vierling, a six-foot-tall St. Louis newspaper columnist. I wrote four hardboiled Francesca mysteries.
Tough, glamorous Francesca drives an '86 Jaguar. She investigates the murder of a transvestite in Backstab and the death of a RUB, a rich urban biker, in Rubout. In The Pink Flamingo Murders, Francesca looks into a murder that would horrify anyone fighting to improve a rundown city neighborhood: a ruthless gentrifier is stabbed with a pink plastic flamingo. Got her right in the heart with the bird's metal legs. In Doc in the Box, bad doctors get the deaths they deserve.
The Francesca series ended after four books, but readers still enjoy it. This May, a New Yorker with lymphoma told me she gave Doc in the Box to her oncologist as a gift - or a warning.
After the hardboiled Francesca series, I worked dead-end jobs until my agent sold Shop Till You Drop, my first Dead-End Job mystery. This series features Helen Hawthorne, a St. Louis woman on the run in South Florida. Now I was writing funny, traditional mysteries, cheerfully slaughtering bad bosses and annoying customers. Shop Till You Drop made the list of 16 Florida Must Read Books, along with John D. MacDonald, Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard.
Elaine Viets portraitHelen works a different low-paying job each novel, and I've worked most of them. In Shop Till You Drop, Helen sells bustiers to bimbos. Murder Between the Covers was set at a bookstore. Bookselling is one of my favorite jobs, and definitely not a dead-end one. Helen and I worked as telemarketers for Dying to Call You. That was my worst job ever – I sold septic tank cleaner. In Just Murdered, Helen and I worked in the bridal department of a posh store and survived attacks by crazed bridezillas. I loved working at an upscale dog boutique for Murder Unleashed. Helen and I were hotel housekeepers for Murder with Reservations. We learned hotel secrets, including never use a hotel coffee pot. Spend twenty bucks for room service coffee. You'll thank me.
For Clubbed to Death, Helen and I were in "customer care" at a snooty country club whose motto was "Do you know who I am?"
Killer Cuts took place at a hair salon where a color and cut were $300. Half-Price Homicide was set at a consignment shop where trophy wives sell their designer duds. It's the only way they could get cash from their controlling husbands.
In Pumped for Murder, Helen's tenth adventure, she opened a detective agency, Coronado Investigations, with her private eye partner and husband, Phil Sagemont. That opened new possibilities to keep the series fresh. Helen still works those low-paying jobs, only now she goes undercover as a PI.
Final Sail, set aboard a 143-foot yacht, gave a crew's eye view of floating luxury. Board Stiff was the ultimate beach book, set in the cutthroat world of beach concessions, including paddleboarding.
Catnapped" By Elaine VietsCatnapped! was fun to write, but poor Helen went undercover in the world of cat shows and learned how to wash a long-haired cat. (You start with Goop. Seriously.) Checked Out is a library lover's dream. Helen and I volunteered at our local library. Suspense Magazine named it one of the top mysteries of 2015.
Once the Dead-End Job series was launched, Penguin asked me to write a cozy series featuring a mystery shopper, Josie Marcus. My mother was a mystery shopper, so I was born to write this series. Besides, it would only be for three books. The series got off to a good start with Dying in Style when it tied for first place on the Independent Mystery Bookseller Association bestseller list
Josie happily mystery-shops everything from high heels in High Heels Are Murder to lingerie in An Uplifting Murder. Then I turned in A Dog Gone Murder, where Josie mystery-shops dog day care. Think your pup is romping on the grassy green lawns you see on the Website? Josie says you should tour the day care center in person. With A Dog Gone Murder, I realized my three-book series was now ten books.
I enjoyed writing all those mysteries, but I missed the dark side. Even cozies aren't all kittens and cupcakes. Miss Marple, the fluffy knitter who declared "I am Nemesis," relentlessly brought killers to justice.
I can't wait for you to read my 15th Dead-End Job mystery, The Art of Murder, set at a quirky South Florida museum.
I like writing about Helen Hawthorne's lighthearted adventures in South Florida, as well as Angela Richman's visits to the dark side.
I enjoy mysteries for all moods: Light and dark, hard-boiled and cozy. I hope you will, too.
Elaine Viets
USA flag
As a young girl, Elaine Viets was taught the virtues of South St. Louis: the importance of hard work, housecleaning, and paying cash. She managed to forget almost everything she learned, which is why she turned to mystery writing.
Elaine is president of the Florida chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, and was a judge for the MWA's coveted Edgar Award for Best Novel 2000. The St. Louis native now lives in Hollywood, Florida, with her husband, Don Crinklaw, where they collect speeding tickets.
Genres: Cozy Mystery, Mystery
New and upcoming books
April 2024
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A Scarlet Death
(Angela Richman, Death Investigator, book 8)
Series
Francesca Vierling
1. Backstab (1997)
2. Rubout (1998)
3. The Pink Flamingo Murders (1999)
4. Doc in a Box (2000)
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Dead-End Job
1. Shop Till You Drop (2003)
2. Murder Between the Covers (2003)
3. Dying to Call You (2004)
4. Just Murdered (2005)
5. Murder Unleashed (2006)
6. Murder with Reservations (2007)
7. Clubbed to Death (2008)
8. Killer Cuts (2009)
9. Half-Price Homicide (2010)
10. Pumped for Murder (2011)
11. Final Sail (2012)
12. Board Stiff (2013)
Killer Blonde (2014)
13. Catnapped! (2014)
14. Checked Out (2015)
15. The Art of Murder (2016)
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Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper
1. Dying In Style (2005)
2. High Heels Are Murder (2006)
3. An Accessory to Murder (2007)
4. Murder with All the Trimmings (2008)
5. The Fashion Hound Murders (2009)
6. An Uplifting Murder (2010)
7. Death on a Platter (2011)
8. Murder is a Piece of Cake (2012)
9. Fixing to Die (2013)
10. A Dog Gone Murder (2014)
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Angela Richman, Death Investigator
1. Brain Storm (2016)
2. Fire and Ashes (2017)
Ice Blonde (2018)
3. A Star is Dead (2020)
4. Death Grip (2020)
5. Life Without Parole (2021)
6. Late for His Own Funeral (2022)
7. The Dead Of Night (2023)
8. A Scarlet Death (2024)
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Collections
Urban Affairs (1988)
Deal With the Devil (2018)
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Series contributed to
Happy Homicides
3. Crimes of the Heart (2021) (with others)
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Non fiction hide
Viets Guide to Sex,Travel and Anything Else That Will Sell This Book (1989)
How to Commit Monogamy (1997)
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Omnibus editions hide
Drop-Dead Blonde (2005) (with others)
Welcome Elaine Viets, JABberwocky’s newest fiction author!
12/13/2017
© Elaine Viets Photo by Cristiana Pecheanu. Hair and makeup by Mario Ortega.
JABberwocky is thrilled to announce that best-selling mystery author, Elaine Viets, is our latest addition to our client list!
Elaine Viets is the author of four best-selling mysteries series: the light-hearted Dead-End Job series, the cozy Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper series, the hardboiled Francesca Vierling series, and the dark police procedural Angela Richman, Death Investigator series. Elaine is also the winner of the Anthony, Agatha, and Lefty Awards and was the Guest of Honor at the Malice Domestic 2017 conference.
In case you missed the announcement on Publishers Marketplace (12/7), JABberwocky has sold Elaine Viets’s A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL AND 13 SHORT STORIES, a collection of mystery/thriller short stories, some featuring characters from the DEAD-END JOBS, FRANCESCA VIERLING, and ANGELA RICHMAN, DEATH INVESTIGATOR series to Crippen & Landru. The collection, scheduled for publication in Spring 2018, is sure to delight readers with its bedeviling stories of murder and mystery.
You can visit Elaine’s website or follow her @evmysterywriter.
Elaine Viets
Agent
Joshua Bilmes
Elaine Viets has written 34 mysteries in four series: the bestselling Dead-End Job series with South Florida PI Helen Hawthorne, the cozy Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper mysteries, and the dark Francesca Vierling mysteries. With the Angela Richman Death Investigator series, Elaine returns to her hardboiled roots and uses her experience as a stroke survivor and her studies at the Medicolegal Death Investigators Training Course. Elaine was a director at large for the Mystery Writers of America. She’s a frequent contributor to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and anthologies edited by Charlaine Harris and Lawrence Block. Elaine won the Anthony, Agatha and Lefty Awards.
Find Elaine on her website, or follow her on Twitter @evmysterywriter.
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Elaine Viets
3. Let’s talk a little bit more about your main characters, Helen Hawthorne and her husband Phil Sagemont. What makes these super sleuths such a formidable pair?
They are a marriage of equals. Both are smart and dedicated. People always try to figure out who’s the better person in a couple – which one is smarter, richer, better looking. I believe a marriage of equals is possible. Sue Grafton said she didn’t want to give Kinsey Milhone a husband or long-term lover because she didn’t want to write the “Nick and Nora Charles dialogue.” I saw it as a challenge and hope it works.
4. Please take us on a tour of your website highlighting points of interest.
Elaine Viets
My website www.elaineviets.com has my bio, events, contests, and all my novels' first chapters for both of my series, and a free poster for Checked Out. It says, Libraries are like Las Vegas – what happens there stays there. Librarians protect patrons’ privacy. There is also a picture of my 1986 Jaguar, the same car Judge Lexie Deener drives in my Dead-End Job mystery,"Catnapped!" There are also photos of my cats, Harry and Mystery. Harry is my striped rescue cat. Mystery is a Chartreux, a French cat, who was bred to be a show cat. Unfortunately, she bit a judge and was barred from the ring, so we got to adopt her. She’s a lovable cat, as long as you’re not a show judge.
5. Are you currently at work on your next book? If so, what may you share with our readers?
Elaine Viets
Yes. I’m starting a new dark series featuring Death Investigator Angela Richman. She lives in mythical Chouteau County, near St. Louis. The rich live in the town of Chouteau Forest, a bastion of old money. The workers live in Toonerville. But death doesn't discriminate between the rich and the poor. Brain Storm, the first Angela Richman mystery, will be published August 2. This is a deeply personal mystery, which reflects my own fight to survive six strokes and brain surgery. This new series is a departure for me, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.
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St. Louis author Elaine Viets draws from her stroke survival in new, dark mystery ‘Brain Storm’
By Kelly Moffitt
Published July 27, 2016 at 2:06 PM CDT
LISTEN • 17:56
Elaine Viets
Eight years ago, mystery author Elaine Viets survived six strokes, a coma and brain surgery. Now, she’s drawing on that experience in a new, dark mystery called “Brain Storm,” which will be released on Aug. 2.
The former St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist now makes her home in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, but still draws extensively from her years in St. Louis. This book, for example, is set in the fictionalized land of Chouteau Forest, has a villain named Dr. Gravois and features a heroine, Angela Richman, who is a “death investigator,” a role first created out of Saint Louis University in 1978.
“It’s about my struggle with brain surgery and six strokes and a coma…but it is also a good mystery,” Viets told St. Louis on the Air contributor Steve Potter. “I’ve been writing cozies and light-hearted traditional mysteries but I started writing dark mysteries in St. Louis and I want to go back to that.”
Viets, who often uses her personal life as inspiration for her mystery writing, has also authored the “Dead End Jobs” series, the “Mystery Shopper” series and several other dark mystery series. She said her “Dead End Jobs” series was influenced by the time in her life when she moved to southern Florida from St. Louis.
“I was writing mysteries for Bantam Dell and I had a 5 book contract and then Random House bought Bantam Dell,” Viets said. “My contract was over, the series was killed, my husband was in the hospital with stage 3 cancer and we were being audited by the IRS. It was a stellar year.”
So, she went on to take a job at a bookstore to help pay the rent.
“I discovered that when you’re a columnist for the Post-Dispatch, people treat you much better than when you’re a clerk barely making minimum wage,” Viets said.
Her experiences at that bookstore led her to create a protagonist who only took so-called dead-end jobs to stay under-the-radar. That series, and many of Viets’ other works have a lighter, more humorous tone.
“Brain Storm,” which is the first of several novels that will focus on death investigations is much darker. Viets said that, when she was writing it, she was in a much angrier place.
Credit Thomas & Mercer
Elaine Viets' latest mystery, "Brain Storm."
“What happened was that I went to one of the top 50 hospitals in the U.S. with headaches and the neurologist on call said I was too young and fit to have a stroke,” Viets said. “He said to come back on Wednesday for a PET scan. For me, Wednesday never happened. My husband found me and I had six strokes and needed brain surgery. I was in a coma for a week.”
It took Viets four years to recover and she had to learn everything all over again.
“That’s why writing this book was so hard,” Viets said. “I was angry, I was misdiagnosed and couldn’t do anything about it.”
Angela Richman, “Brain Storm’s” protagonist, has also suffered from a stroke that almost left her dead. That makes for the perfect unreliable narrator, Viets said, which adds mystery to the novel in and of itself.
Listen to Viets discuss her writing, her new book and more:
St. Louis on the Air brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. St. Louis on the Air host Don Marsh and producers Mary Edwards, Alex Heuer and Kelly Moffitt give you the information you need to make informed decisions and stay in touch with our diverse and vibrant St. Louis region.
Send questions and comments about this story to feedback@stlpublicradio.org.
The Interview
The Dead End Job series is being re-released as e-books. I understand you actually did all of these jobs, can you talk about how that series came together? What made you decide to focus on crappy jobs you’ve experienced?
I worked most of the crummy jobs in the Dead-End Job series. I didn’t actually wash cats for Catnapped! the way my PI Helen Hawthorne did, though I did have the help of Judge Tracy Petty. She not only judges pedigreed cats, but showed them, too. My worst Dead-End job was telemarketer for Dying to Call You. If I go to hell, I’ll be a telemarketer. The best – and I don’t consider it a real dead-end job – was bookseller for Murder Between the Covers. For my first Dead-End Job novel, Shop till You Drop, I sold bustiers to bimbos. For Murder with Reservations, I worked as a hotel maid and made 38 beds and cleaned 17 toilets a day, plus the Jacuzzi in the honeymoon suite. I actually scrubbed Hershey’s syrup out of the Jacuzzi.
The Dead-End Job series started after Don and I’d had a bad year: he had Stage 3 cancer, my Francesca Vierling mystery series was canceled due to a publishing merger, and we were being audited by the IRS. To pay the mortgage, I worked in a bookstore, and that’s when I got the idea for the DEJ series. Each book featured a different low-paying job. I worked everything from customer service at a country club whose motto was “Do you know who I am?” – that was Clubbed to Death – to selling expensive bridal gowns in Just Murdered. For Checked Out, set at a library, I shelved books. The librarians loved me – I’m six feet tall and I could reach the top shelves.
This was a mostly pink collar world – low paying jobs for women. I was fascinated by how customers behaved. Often they indulged in what I called “clerk abuse.” They’d had a bad day with their boss or their spouse, and they took out their frustration on the bookseller or the customer care person. Clerk abuse was no fun – but I killed them in my novels.
“Death Investigators are the paralegals of the forensic world.”
Your multiple series run from traditional mystery to cozy – what makes you choose to write in different sub-genres? Does the process differ for you?
I started writing hard-boiled mysteries with my Francesca Vierling newspaper series. When a publishing merger wiped out Dell books and ended the series, I was heartbroken. It took me two years to come up with another idea, the Dead-End Job mysteries. Penguin editor Genny Ostertag bought that series and it lasted for 15 books.
Penguin had great success with cozies and asked me to try a mystery shopper series. My mother was a mystery shopper and so I wrote the first Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper mystery, Dying in Style. That book tied with Stephen King for first place on the independent mystery booksellers list. Josie was supposed to be a two to three book series, but Penguin kept renewing the contracts until I’d written 10 mystery shopper novels. The cozy genre has many restrictions – no graphic sex or violence, no cussing. After 10 books, I figured I’d taken the series as far as I could, and discontinued it.
I wanted to write darker forensic mysteries. I took the Medicolegal Death Investigators Training Course for forensic professionals at St. Louis University to learn about death investigators. Death Investigators are the paralegals of the forensic world. They work for the medical examiner. At a crime scene, the DI is in charge of the body and the police handle the rest of the scene. I started my Angela Richman death investigator series with Brain Storm.
“Eleven years ago, I had six strokes…”
You have survived six strokes and brain surgery – how did that experience impact your writing?
Eleven years ago, I had six strokes, including a hemorrhagic stroke, and a coma. I was in the hospital three months and my nearly complete recovery took four years. Three days before the strokes, I’d gone to the ER with blinding migraines and other symptoms, and the neurologist on call told me I was too young and fit to have a stroke and sent me home. That was terrible advice – for anyone. Three days later, my husband found me unconscious and I wound up in the hospital for real.
When the strokes hit, I’d been about to leave on tour for Murder with Reservations, my DEJ mystery set in a hotel. While I was in a coma, the mystery community held a tour by proxy and sold my novels coast to coast. They saved my career. My husband saved my life. I recovered, thanks to the help and good wishes of my family and friends.
I used that experience in Brain Storm and killed (on paper) the doctor who misdiagnosed me for my DI, Angela Richman. The brain surgeon who saved her life is accused of killing the incompetent doctor. DI Angela Richman is the ultimate unreliable narrator – she’s drugged and brain damaged but has to save the man who saved her.
With thirty-two novels under your belt – what advice do you have for writers debuting their first novel?
Writing is a business. Know your business. Join professional organizations for networking and to meet other writers. I belong to the Mystery Writers of America, ITW and Sisters in Crime. Attend conferences and writing workshops, especially ones that are suited to your sub-genre. Get to know your local bookstores.
Take us through writing a novel – what’s your process like?
I’m working on an outline for my next Angela Richman novel now. I do a detailed chapter by chapter outline while I research what forensic information I’ll need for the story. I also consult police and death investigator experts. Once that’s finished, I’m ready to start writing. I try to finish 1,500 words a day. In the morning, I reread what I wrote the day before. I may throw it out because I don’t think it’s working, but the novel seems to progress with this system. The actual writing taken four to six months. Once it’s finished, I revise, then turn it in to my agent, Joshua Bilmes at JABberwocky. Joshua does a line edit of my work and sometimes demands a complete rewrite. It doesn’t go to the editor until Joshua approves it.
What are you working on now?
I’ve just finished Ice Blonde, my Angela Richman, Death Investigator novella, which will be published this June. Deal with the Devil and 13 Short Stories, a collection of short stories published by Crippen & Landru, will be published April 28. It debuts at the Malice Domestic mystery conference in Bethesda.
Final words of wisdom:
A writer writes. It’s fun to talk about writing, take classes and tell yourself, “I need to learn more about writing short stories, or outlining my novel, or plotting a thriller.” All that may be true. But if you’re a real writer, you’ll take the difficult step of sitting alone at your computer and actually writing. You’ll write novels and they may be so terrible you’ll bury them in a desk drawer. But that’s how you learn how to write. Keep on writing.
Great advice, thanks Elaine!
Viets, Elaine BRAIN STORM Thomas & Mercer (Adult Fiction) $15.95 8, 2 ISBN: 978-1-5039-3631-7
A death investigator battles to clear the neurosurgeon who saved her life.Dr. Jeb Travis Tritt is far from wealthy Chouteau Forest, Missouri's favorite son. A large man with a larger ego, he's tolerated only by virtue of his marriage to a local debutante. But numerous affairs with nurses at Sisters of Sorrow Hospital have pretty much trashed that union, and Tritt may be on his way out. Angela Marie Richman, on the other hand, is a child of the Forest in the truest sense: she grew up on the Du Pres estate, where her parents were caretakers. Now, as death investigator, she's been a pillar to the Forest elite in their darkest moments, like the night cousins Jordan Hobart and Jillian Du Pres crashed into Sandy Warburton's red Ferrari with deadly results. But in her moment of need--when she came to the SOS emergency room with obvious symptoms--popular neurologist Porter Gravois sent her home as "too young and fit to have a stroke." Only quick intervention by the arrogant Tritt saved her life. Now, as Angela starts her long recovery, she's tormented not only by the cosmic conundrum of how kindly Dr. Gravois almost killed her while obnoxious Dr. Tritt saved her, but by the real-world puzzle of how to get her life together. Left bald and bloated by her treatment, awash in impenetrable medical bills, and plagued by doubts about her ability to function in her job, she leans increasingly on her best friend, pathologist Katherine Kelly Stern. But when Dr. Tritt is accused of murder, Angela gathers her scattered wits to prove she can still investigate a death, even one that's personal.Viets' new series launch carries more heft than her earlier cozies (Catnapped!, 2014, etc.). Her complicated heroine deserves a return outing.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Viets, Elaine: BRAIN STORM." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2016. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A454177038/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ece0033e. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Brain Storm: Angela Richman, Death Investigator, Book 1
Elaine Viets. Thomas & Mercer, $15.95 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-5039-3631-7
Devastating migraines send "death investigator" Angela Richman, the heroine of this well-paced, darkly humorous series launch from Viets (The Art of Murder and 14 other Dead-End Job mysteries), to the emergency room of the Choteau Forest, Mo., hospital, only to be heedlessly sent home by Dr. Porter Gravois. Nineteen days, six strokes, and a coma later, Angela awakens in the hospital, her life saved due to expedient brain surgery by the brash, outspoken, brilliant Dr. Jeb Travis Tritt. An outsider, Tritt is despised as much as Gravois is adored by the well-to-do locals, and there's no love lost between the two. When Gravois is murdered, Tritt becomes the prime suspect. Brain-damaged Angela may have trouble telling fact from fiction, but she knows that Tritt is wrongly accused and is determined to prove his innocence. Angela's endearing, spirited, and resilient humanity resonates on the page. Viets takes an entertaining detour from her usual cozy territory, though some sections don't stray too far from the genre's formulaic path. Agent: Jill Man, Sandra Dijkstra Agency. (Aug.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"Brain Storm: Angela Richman, Death Investigator, Book 1." Publishers Weekly, vol. 263, no. 25, 20 June 2016, p. 137. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A456344736/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f84c711b. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Brain Storm. By Elaine Viets. Aug. 2016.330p. Amazon/Thomas & Mercer, $15.99 (9781503936317).
Viets brings readers a treat with a new series featuring coroner's investigator Angela Richman, who lives in a wealthy St. Louis suburb in a house inherited from her parents, who were once servants in the community. While working an accident scene, Angela experiences a severe headache and ends up in the emergency room. Dr. Porter Gravois, a well-connected neurologist, sends her home with orders for a PET scan the next morning, but a series of strokes almost kills her. Fortunately, a brilliant neurosurgeon from the wrong side of the tracks, Dr. Jeb Travis Tritt, saves her life and her brain. As Angela works to recover from her strokes, she overhears the two physicians quarreling viciously. When Dr. Gravois keels over in the hospital cafeteria, everyone accuses Dr. Tritt of poisoning him. Angela is sure Tritt is innocent and wants to help him, but her condition and Dr. Gravois' status are major obstacles. Angela must cope with sexist and incompetent detectives, corrupt hospital administrators, and local snobs as she looks for clues. Viets, a stroke survivor herself, builds her unusual premise into a compelling thriller that moves quickly and builds suspense steadily.--Barbara Bibel
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Bibel, Barbara. "Brain Storm." Booklist, vol. 112, no. 21, 1 July 2016, p. 34. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A459888963/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a759ca99. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Viets, Elaine A STAR IS DEAD Severn House (Adult Fiction) $28.99 4, 7 ISBN: 978-0-7278-9016-0
A plethora of suspects emerges when a fading star flames out.
Jessica Gray is a diva to the core. More than 50 years ago, she ruled Hollywood, dancing naked in Eternally Groovy and partying till the wee hours at Whiskey a GoGo. Now in her 70s, she still captivates audiences, her age carefully concealed by makeup artist Will London. When her one-woman tour takes her to Chouteau County, Missouri, local hairdresser Mario Garcia is thrilled at the chance to work similar magic on her blonde locks. He even talks his good friend Angela Richman (Ice Blonde, 2018, etc.) into coming to the show and traveling with the star's entourage. Although she marvels at Jessica's stunning face and figure, Angela is horrified by her act, which includes merciless mockery of three homeless women. And riding with Jessica's roadies puts Angela right in the limo when the star goes into respiratory distress and dies. Now Angela's in a bind. As death investigator for Chouteau County, it's her job to take charge of the body and perform the tests required by the medical examiner. But she's also a witness to a death that's looking more suspicious by the minute. Worst of all, the police zero in on her pal Mario as the prime suspect. Angela's outraged. Mario, who thinks the world of Jessica, has no motive at all. Jessica's makeup artist, Will; her understudy, Tawnee Simms; and her assistant, Stu Milano, all hate her. And the three women she's humiliated aren't her biggest fans either. Despite a whopping big clue, Angela takes her sweet time solving the case, rescuing her friend Mario by a hair.
Needless complications are likely to try the reader's patience.
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"Viets, Elaine: A STAR IS DEAD." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2020. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A612619267/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f966583d. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Viets, Elaine. A Star Is Dead. Severn House. (Angela Richman, Death Investigator, Bk. 4). Apr. 2020.224p. ISBN 9780727890160. $28.99. M
Angela Richman wishes she hadn't been in the audience when Jessica Gray made her final appearance in St. Louis, MO. Jessica, a movie star in the 1960s, is now an elderly diva with a stand-up show in which she made fun of three homeless women. Angela, a death investigator in the nearby town of Chouteau Forest, Was supporting her friend, Mario Garcia, a local hair stylist hired to work on the show. Angela witnesses Jessica's cruel treatment of her staff before the star collapses and is rushed to the hospital. Despite her pneumonia, Jessica insists on checking out, but her trip to the airport is her final ride. Angela watches in horror via Mario's phone video as the diva collapses and dies of poisoning. After Mario is arrested for murder, Angela pulls strings to keep in the loop so she can search for the killer before Jessica's team leaves town. The complex case includes homelessness, bigotry, and capital punishment. VERDICT The fourth in the series (after Ice Blonde) is an intriguing mystery featuring a character in the little-known job of death investigator. Fans of forensic mysteries will overlook the sleuth's questionable actions in this dramatic story. [See Prepub Alert, 9/23/19.]--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Holstine, Lesa. "Viets, Elaine. A Star Is Dead." Library Journal, vol. 145, no. 4, Apr. 2020, p. 68. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A619849050/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b12e172b. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
A Star Is Dead. By Elaine Viets. Apr. 2020. 224p. Severn, $28.99 (9780727890160); e-book (9781448303731).
Jessica Gray is an over-the-hill Hollywood star on a one-person revival tour in the Midwest. After a show in St. Louis, she visits the upscale community of Chouteau Forest, where she humiliates several homeless people on stage. She also fires her staff and treats everyone badly. When she suddenly collapses at a party, she is rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with pneumonia, but she checks herself out against medical advice. She wants to return to "civilization" in California, but she has a severe coughing fit on the way to the airport and dies before she can return to the hospital. After it's determined that Gray was poisoned, Angela Richman decides to investigate, driven by the arrest of her friend Mario, a Cuban hair stylist, for the crime. She's certain he's innocent, but the incompetent, gung-ho detective on the case wants a quick solution. With Gray having had so many enemies, there is no shortage of suspects. This third in Viets' Death Investigator series will satisfy both procedural and cozy fans who like a good puzzle. --Barbara Bibel
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 American Library Association
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Bibel, Barbara. "A Star Is Dead." Booklist, vol. 116, no. 16, 15 Apr. 2020, p. 21. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A623790249/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f44d5c38. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Death Grip
Elaine Viets. Severn, $28.99 (208p) ISBN 978-0-7278-9018-4
Early in Agatha finalist Viets's unexciting fifth mystery featuring death investigator Angela Richman (after 2019's A Star Is Dead), the body of missing high school track star Terri Gibbons turns up in an isolated wooded area of Chouteau Forest, Mo. Angela and her colleagues, Det. Jace Budewitz and assistant medical examiner Katie Kelly Stern, must contend with a formidable suspect in Terri's strangulation murder. Briggs Bellerive, the "most eligible bachelor" of upscale Chouteau Forest, can use his money and influence to sway investigators and townsfolk alike, despite the evidence against him, including a handwritten message inside the victim's shoe indicating he's the killer. Angela, Jace, and Katie wind up having to pursue Bellerive in secret for fear of their jobs and reputations. Meanwhile, Angela must deal with her feelings toward Officer Christopher Ferretti two years after her husband's death, along with her day-to-day case load. Since the murderer's identity and methods are clear from the beginning, there's not much suspense along the way to the predictable ending. Viets has done better. Agent:Joshua Bilmes, JABberwocky Literary. (Mar.)
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"Death Grip." Publishers Weekly, vol. 268, no. 4, 25 Jan. 2021, p. 45. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A651876996/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=bd0a3cea. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Viets, Elaine DEATH GRIP Severn House (Fiction None) $28.99 3, 2 ISBN: 978-0-7278-9018-4
Death is altogether too great a part of life for Missouri death investigator Angela Richman.
Neither medical professionals nor law enforcement agents, death investigators occupy a peculiar niche in states where they serve. They examine the remains of those who die unexpectedly, suspiciously, or violently, collecting evidence to be used by coroners and police. Their job is not to investigate crimes, as Angela is constantly reminded. So she doesn’t usually investigate. Not when elderly Ruby Davis is found deceased in her living room with her finger partway hacked off. Not when plastic surgeon Robert Beningham Scott expires behind the wheel of his fancy sports car with other significant body parts waving in the wind. But when a corpse found in the woods is identified as that of high school track star Terri Gibbons, who disappeared months ago after a practice run, it’s hard for Angela to leave it be. Especially not when she finds a gum wrapper hidden in Terri’s shoe with a note scrawled on it implicating a prominent landowner in her death. Angela’s growing obsession with nailing Terri’s killer puts her own job and that of her best friend, Detective Jace Budewitz, in jeopardy. Does Angela care that much about the demise of a girl she never met? Or is she using Terri’s murder to tamp down her feelings about the passing that haunts her most of all: her husband’s fatal heart attack?
Viets produces chills with a murder hunt turned on its head.
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"Viets, Elaine: DEATH GRIP." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2020. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A644767176/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3bce5695. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Viets, Elaine LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE Severn House (Fiction None) $28.99 11, 2 ISBN: 978-0-7278-5028-7
Missouri death investigator Angela Richman investigates the demise of a powerful developer.
Tom Lockridge built much of the commercial real estate in Chouteau Forest, amassing a vast fortune in the process. In order to share his wealth, he married his office manager, Cindy, who grew up in Fairdale Manor Mobile Home Park. Seeking to fit into Tom's upscale lifestyle, Cindy remakes herself as Cynthia Lockridge, a budding socialite who drives a red Jaguar and hosts lavish parties at their vacation home in Lake of the Ozarks. She's in the office of her spacious home, trying to figure out how to give their attendees at the upcoming Chouteau Forest Christmas Ball the steak dinners they deserve while still making millions for charity, when her husband is killed with three shots to the head in the bedroom wing. Naturally, she's Detective Jace Budewitz's leading suspect in the murder, especially when he hears rumors of her affair with attorney Wes Desloge. Angela isn't so sure. She's swayed by Fairdale manager Shirley Rawlins, who describes Cindy as a hardworking teenager who avoided the park's more unsavory residents. As Angela helps Jace with his investigation, the body count soars. A dog walker is shot by a vigilante with an assault weapon, a bank teller is run over by a drunk octogenarian, and Lockridge's new bookkeeper is poisoned. Not all the deaths she investigates stem from the Lockridge murder, but whatever their origin, steady, efficient Angela makes sure no detail is overlooked.
Viets' fans should enjoy her latest corpse-filled outing.
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"Viets, Elaine: LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A673650095/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=cb5d81f8. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Viets, Elaine LATE FOR HIS OWN FUNERAL Severn House (Fiction None) $28.99 7, 5 ISBN: 978-0-72785-029-4
A boorish businessman just can't stop dying.
Even though Sterling Chaney was a drunken lout who cheated on her at every opportunity, his long-suffering wife, Camilla, still arranges the send-off of Sterling's dreams, complete with a burnished-bronze Promethean casket that sets his estate back a cool $30,000. Which turns out to be money well spent, since, in the middle of the eulogy, who should appear at the door of the church but the dearly departed himself, drunk as a skunk but still able to appreciate Camilla's last generous gesture of love? Camilla's appreciation, on the other hand, is fleeting. Days after she learns that the corpse found in Sterling's Porsche actually belonged to a thief who stole it shortly before the fatal crash and welcomes her errant husband back, she finds orange lipstick on the collar of his shirt and throws him out. Meantime, Sterling's become a celebrity, appearing on news shows across the nation and drawing the eye of investigative reporter Valeria Cannata. She turns a feel-good piece about the man who crashed his own funeral into an expos� of his phone-sex business, complete with interviews with the women who work there. Now Camilla is not only a wronged wife, she's also a social outcast, married to a man whose vast fortune rests on the exploitation of the most desperate. When he crashes his brand-new red Ferrari and dies for real, she's in a jam: The police have ample cause to arrest her, and the judge won't order release on bail. Only her best friend, death investigator Angela Richman, believes she's innocent. Angela takes on the whole police force, including her boyfriend, to prove her point.
Catchy hook, draggy investigation, and a solution from out of left field. At least that pricey coffin doesn't go to waste.
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"Viets, Elaine: LATE FOR HIS OWN FUNERAL." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A703414046/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7b646760. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
The Dead of Night
Elaine Viets. Severn, $31.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-4483-1035-7
At the start of Agatha finalist Viets's enjoyable eighth mystery featuring Angela Richman, death investigator for Chouteau County, Mo. (after 2022's Late for His Own Funeral), Angela and her date, police officer Christopher Ferretti, attend the annual Howl-o-ween Benefit Auction for Chouteau Forest University; the highest bidder gets the opportunity to stay in the Cursed Crypt. Any winner who succeeds in spending the full night there will be granted membership in the elite and powerful Chouteau Founders Club. Since the 1980s, only one brave soul has managed this feat. When the crypt is opened the morning after the auction, inside are the horribly mutilated bodies of this year's top bidder, alleged rapist Trey Lawson, and his girlfriend, Lydia Fynch, whose testimony at his trial saved him from prison. Angela and Det. Jace Budewitz, her friend and colleague, investigate these murders as well as other suspicious deaths that may or may not be connected. Fans of the intrepid and relatively sensible Angela will overlook the wobbly plot and wonky motives as they cheer on her burgeoning relationship with Christopher, who never gets in her way. Cozy readers will find plenty to like. Agent: Joshua Bilmes.J ABberwocky. (Apr.)
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"The Dead of Night." Publishers Weekly, vol. 270, no. 6, 6 Feb. 2023, p. 42. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A737971757/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=83620a82. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Viets, Elaine THE DEAD OF NIGHT Severn House (Fiction None) $31.99 4, 4 ISBN: 9781448310357
Death investigator Angela Richman probes a gruesome murder in a cursed crypt.
Chouteau Forest University's Howl-o-ween Benefit Auction features a fancy dinner where the hoi polloi mingle freely with the likes of Reggie and Bradford Du Pres, members of the exclusive Chouteau Founders Club. There's even room for rich nobodies like Trey Lawson to breathe the rarified air. But the main event is a bidding war for the right to spend the night in the university's Cursed Crypt, the burial spot of Eugene Franco "Mean Gene" Cortini, who in 1822 laid a curse on the fledgling college that haunts it to this day. What could possibly go wrong when Lawson snatches the prize from under Bradford's nose and is gleefully locked in the tomb to spend the night with his college-age girlfriend, a case of beer, two bottles of Merlot, and a fifth of tequila? Angela, who attends the shindig at the urging of her boss, Police Chief Butkus, has her misgivings, especially when she finds a jack-o-lantern inscribed with the warning "Mean Gene will not sleep alone. Tonight two will join him--permanently!" But Butkus pooh-poohs her concerns until the next morning, when two dead bodies are discovered, awash in blood. The first part of the puzzle: How did someone get into the crypt, which was locked and chained shut? The second, even more puzzling part: Which of Lawson's many enemies did it? Viets lets Angela stretch way past her pedestrian role as a collector of death scene evidence, making her almost a partner to the investigating officer.
Allowing her heroine to be both methodical and intuitive should endear Viets to fans of feisty female sleuths.
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"Viets, Elaine: THE DEAD OF NIGHT." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A743460621/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f08c99eb. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Viets, Elaine A SCARLET DEATH Severn House (Fiction None) $29.99 4, 2 ISBN: 9781448311446
Distractions aplenty complicate Missouri death investigator Angela Richman's probe of a prominent businessman's demise.
There's no question that Selwyn Skipton was murdered. The 70-year-old was found wearing nothing but a scarlet cutout of the letter "A" stapled to his chest. And there's not much mystery about what he was doing shortly before his death, since the room where he died, rented secretly above Maya Richards' candy shop, was furnished with a king-size bed with black satin sheets and museum-grade prints of famous nudes. But who killed Skipton and why remain unclear. His wealthy widow, Estelle, claims to know nothing about his love nest. His secretary admits she was there once, but only on business. A search of the victim's computer reveals ties to a service offering companionship to "sugar daddies" willing to pay for it. All these gritty details make Angela's boss eager to keep the circumstances of Skipton's death quiet. Hoping for a quick arrest, he allows her to assist the police. And Angela's happy to have a case to solve while she's pondering what to do about a marriage proposal from patrol officer Chris Ferretti. But many more problems await her, as a stealth attack puts Chris' life in danger and more deaths rain down, some connected to the Skipton case, others altogether separate. Before long, the complications become so fast and furious that the original murder, with its intriguing setup, gets lost in the shuffle.
Multiple puzzles keep up the suspense, but the resolution proves a letdown.
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"Viets, Elaine: A SCARLET DEATH." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A786185756/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b0aa7ef1. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.