Dead-End Job Mystery Series

Book 6

Helen Hawthorne and her new husband, Phil, have just opened a private investigation business. Their first client asks them to watch her husband, who she believes is body building at a gym to impress another woman. This leads Helen to another dead-end job, working as a receptionist at Fantastic Fitness, which requires her to workout as well. Meanwhile, Coronado Investigations takes on a decades-old murder case, keeping Helen busy and exhausted.

Book 10

Final Sail

by Elaine Viets

Published 1 May 2012

"To catch a jewel smuggler on a luxury yacht, Helen needs to pose as the ship's new stewardess--but between serving drinks to the snobs, scrubbing floors, and cleaning up after seasick passengers, she's starting to miss dry land almost as much as she misses Phil. While Helen's cruising to the Bahamas, Phil's got his own job--trying to catch a sexy gold digger who may have killed her elderly new husband for his fortune. Good thing he's a self-proclaimed master of disguise, playing it cool as everything from an air-conditioning repairman to a Rastafarian. Helen's a help to Phil in his case, but when she's on her own on the high seas, Helen needs to watch her step as she searches out the smuggler--or she may end up going from undercover to overboard..."--

Book 13

Checked Out

by Elaine Viets

Published 5 May 2015

"Shhh...in the newest hardcover in the national bestselling Dead-End Job Mystery series, Helen Hawthorne quietly goes undercover at a local library to search for a missing masterpiece. Wealthy socialite Elizabeth Cateman Kingsley has hired Helen to find a missing John Singer Sargent painting, owned by her late father. After his death, many of Davis Cateman's books were donated to the Flora Park library, and his daughter suspects the small watercolor-worth millions-was tucked away inside one of those dusty tomes. To search the stacks, Helen applies for a position as a library volunteer and discovers the library director has a catalog of complaints-from a mischievous calico cat named Paris to the mysterious disappearance of various items that some of the more imaginative staff are attributing to a ghost haunting the building. While her husband Phil sticks his neck out to find a missing necklace, Helen is on her own with no one to lend her a hand. When a dead body turns up in a parking lot, it appears someone is willing to go to any lengths to keep the treasure in the library quiet. Now Helen is bound and determined to find the killer as well as the painting-before she's taken out of circulation herself"--

Book 14

The Art of Murder

by Elaine Viets

Published 1 September 2016

From the national bestselling author of Checked Out, Helen Hawthorne must pose as a painter to catch an artful killer . . .

The art world is a happening place—but a brush with death shouldn’t be in the picture. Unfortunately, that’s just what happens to Helen Hawthorne and her friend Margery. While touring gorgeous Bonnet House, a mansion turned museum, they note an up-and-coming artist in a painting class. When they later see her deadly end, Helen is hired to canvas the crime scene—undercover, of course.

Sketchy suspects lurk in the victim’s past. Was the promising painter killed by her jealous husband? Her best friend? A rival using her artful wiles? With her husband, Phil, busy setting a trap for a gold thief, it’s up to Helen to paint this killer into a corner...

Board Stiff

by Elaine Viets

Published 7 May 2013

Half-Price Homicide

by Elaine Viets

Published 1 May 2010

Tired of living life on the lam, Helen Hawthorne goes back to St. Louis to clear her name of alimony evasion so she can finally marry the man she loves. But she still has to pay the bills, even if it means working at a consignment shop where the designer duds are to die for--literally. Secondhand clothes. First-degree murder. At Snapdragon, the high-end designer consignment shop, Helen is at the beck and call of snobby--yet frugal--customers. That alone is a deadly combination, but the sellers of the drool-worthy fashions can be even more high maintenance. Especially Chrissy, who comes in with a purse to sell and ends up screaming it out with her own husband and another customer. If Helen didn't have a greedy ex-husband demanding more money and a mother in a Florida nursing home, she'd be hanging up her cash register. But when Chrissy is found dead in a dressing room with a hand-painted scarf around her neck, Helen goes from being low on society's totem pole to high on the police's suspect list.

Catnapped!

by Elaine Viets

Published 6 May 2014

The one thing celebrity Trish Barrymore and her no account accountant husband, Mort, can agree on in their bitter divorce is shared cat custody. But when Mort is found brained by a mahogany cat tower, and Justine, their pedigreed Chartreux show cat, goes missing, Trish calls on Helen and Phil. Despite a ransom note from the catnapper, Trish is still the prime murder suspect in the eyes of the police. As they await the post Mortem, it's up to Helen and Phil to find the feline filcher and let the cat out of the bag. Discovering that Mort had some shady dealings within cat show circles, Helen goes undercover as an assistant for a woman who shows prizewinning Persians. But Phil is not buying Trish's cat that swallowed a canary act, he thinks she might be staging the whole catnapping. As Helen and Phil get deeper into a high pressure world of primping, posing, and purring to collar a killer, they get caught up in a cat and mouse game where the stakes are literally life and death...

Clubbed to Death

by Elaine Viets

Published 1 May 2008

Dying to Call You

by Elaine Viets

Published 5 October 2004

Just Murdered

by Elaine Viets

Published 1 May 2005

Helen takes a job at an upscale bridal salon. When a rich, obnoxious mother-of-the-bride is killed, Helen's fingerprints are found on the muder weapon -- a wedding dress.