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.

Living in South Florida has not improved her character. But it has given her the new bestselling Dead-End Job series.

Like her character Helen Hawthorne, Elaine actually works those rotten jobs. Her first book in the series is SHOP TILL YOU DROP, a novel of sex, murder and plastic surgery. It's set at a fashionable dress shop that caters to kept women. Book two, MURDER BETWEEN THE COVERS, takes place at a bookstore. For the third, DYING TO CALL YOU, Helen works as a telemarketer.

In JUST MURDERED, Helen deals with bridezillas and their difficult mothers. For MURDER UNLEASHED, her fifth adventure, Helen goes to the dogs at a pet boutique. In MURDER WITH RESERVATIONS, she gets hard labor. Helen is a hotel maid, cleaning 38 bathrooms, 17 toilets and the honeymoon Jacuzzi. In CLUBBED TO DEATH, the seventh Dead–End Job mystery, Helen handles the problems of people who have no problems at a snobby country club. She enters the world of high fashion hair in KILLER CUTS, when she is an assistant to Miguel Angel, a top stylist. For HALF–PRICE HOMICIDE, Helen works at a designer resale shop and learns way too much about trophy wives. PUMPED FOR MURDER, the tenth Dead–End Job mystery, is Helen's first case as a South Florida private eye. She gets a scary peek into the killer world of competition bodybuilding. In FINAL SAIL, Helen investigates an emerald smuggler aboard a luxury yacht, working undercover as a yacht stewardess.

In FINAL SAIL, Helen investigates an emerald smuggler aboard a luxury yacht, working undercover as a yacht stewardess.

BOARD STIFF is a trip to a South Florida beach, when Helen and Phil try to find out who's out to kill Sunny Jim's Stand-Up Paddleboard Rental business. CATNAPPED! is set in the world of pampered show cats.