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Murder with Reservations
A Dead-End Job Series, No. 6

by Elaine Viets



      A delightful, albeit bizarre, foray into the world of hotel maids, minimum wage jobs and murder most foul. Helen Hawthorne is undercover in more ways than one! Trying to stay off her ex-husband’s radar, she has taken a job at the Full Moon Hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Desperately seeking privacy and anonymity, she is dismayed to be in the gimlet eye of the police when dead bodies start to show up at her workplace. The first body is, unfortunately, a friend and co-worker. In addition, (whoops!) her ex checks into the hotel! Counting on her wacky friends and cohorts both from work and her apartment complex, Helen tries to clean up the messes while maintaining a very low profile.

The story moves smoothly between scenes at the hotel and at the Coronado Tropics Apartments, where Helen lives. Remarkable characters abound, including her landlady and her boss, women of uncertain age but with definite opinions!

Providing great perspective on maid-services in hotels and motels, Elaine Viets keeps the plot moving quickly while keeping us laughing. We learn more about the honeymoon suite and the messes of honeymooners than we ever wanted to know, as well as discovering that one room at the Full Moon Hotel in particular seems to attract the strange and the wacky, including murder. A fun read, this is Elaine Viets' 6th book in this series, and while the books definitely stand alone and don’t need to be read in order, reading one will motivate the reader to try out the rest. This fun dead-job mystery will certainly make you think twice about leaving a tip the next time you stay in a hotel!

The Book

New American Library
May 1, 2007
Hardcover
(13) 978-0-451-22111-7 (10) 0-451-22111-7
Mystery - amateur sleuth
More at Amazon.com
Excerpt
NOTE: Author also has another cozy series.

The Reviewer

Laura Strathman Hulka
Reviewed 2007
NOTE:
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