Murder with All the Trimmings: Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper

It's amazing how Elaine Viets keeps giving us more and more. This is another take on her dead-end job series, but it's a continuous dead-end job. There is a lot going on in this story, and it keeps me on my toes. I'm the type of reader who wants to find out who did it before the reveal. With these books, I'm left guessing until the end, but as soon as I see it, I hit my head and say "I should have had a V8". The clues are all in the book, but I always seem to miss the key one so I can say Ah-Ha! This book is set realistically, and the characters are fun, creative, and not boring one bit.

I started devouring Elaine Viets' books after reading about her in a local Florida paper and I'm hooked on her both her Mystery Shopper series (which includes Murder with all the Trimmings) and her Dead End Job stories. Makes me proud to share a state with her! Don't miss this latest installment in the Josie Marcus saga, but do yourself a real favor and read all of her earlier books in both series. Elaine has a way of spinning a great murder mystery with characters that are quirky, funny and believable all at the same time.

I'd probably be a card-carrying grinch if they issued cards for that, but I enjoyed this Christmas-themed mystery in Elaine Viets' mystery shopper series. Protagonist Josie Marcus is smart, funny, and likable, character flaws and all. She's raising her nine year old daughter Amelia on her slim earnings as a mystery shopper, with help from her mother who lives in the other half of her St. Louis duplex. In this book, some of Josie's past decisions cause trouble at home. She lied to Amelia by saying Amelia's dad Nate was dead, when in fact he had been imprisoned in Canada for drug dealing by the time the girl was born. She's shocked when a very live, and actively alcoholic, Jake turns up on their doorstep. Amelia is thrilled with Jake and alienated by Josie's lies, and Josie's terrified by Jake's threats to take Amelia back to Canada. In the meantime Josie's hunky plumber boyfriend has his own troubles. His skanky ex-girlfriend, the mother of his sullen sociopathic teenaged daughter, has opened a sleazy Christmas store franchise which is doomed to fail, as it's next to two competing, and better, stores. Josie's mystery shopping assignments, her boyfriend's bad news ex and offspring, Jake and his scary drug dealing associates, and the suddenly rebellious Amelia, come together in a series of events which include obscene Christmas ornaments, commercial sabotage, fundamentalist pickets at the sleazy Christmas store, antifreeze in the chocolate sauce, and murder. Josie doesn't always make the best decisions, but she's brave and resourceful. Viets creates some real suspense with this story, which was a very enjoyable read on a cold winter's night.

"Murder with All the Trimmings" by Elaine Viets is an entertaining very real book. The heroine, Josie Marcus, is a mystery shopper. That is a person who buys a predetermined object in a store, just as anyone would, and fills out a form about service, quality, ambiance, etc. (How do I get a job like that?) Josie is a single mother who is fortunate enough to have her mother living upstairs. Ms Marcus is very impulsive and, while not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, is much like any one of us or our best friends. Unfortunately, Josie's ex husband , who had been in jail in Canada, shows up drunk on her doorstep. Even more unfortunately, Josie had preferred to tell her daughter that her father was dead, rather than telling her the truth that he was a jailed drug dealer. Obviously, this alienated Josie's nine-year-old daughter who acted out much as any one of us might have and Josie apparently did when she was young. (As outsiders we can see Josie turning into her mother, as any of us would.) The mystery is almost incidental to the interaction of the characters. This interaction is perfectly real and absolutely terrific. If you don't see either yourself or people you know in these characters, you should get out more. The mystery itself is less realistic which is why the book only gets 4 stars. It is definitely a good read. I like this series.

I have all of Elaine Viets mystery shopper and dead end job mysteries and I love them all. I have to say by far, this is the best of the mystery shopper series. I have noticed that more and more mystery series are going for holiday themes, i.e. Joanna Carl's The Chocolate Snowman Murders and Shirley Murphy's 2007 Cat Deck the Halls Joe Grey Mystery. I cannot speak for the Murphy mystery as I have not read it yet, but I can safely say Viets beats out Carl's Snowman Murders for the better holiday mystery. Josie Marcus is a loveable protaganist as a single mom and amateur sleuth and the recurring cast of characters is what holds the wonderful series together. In this book, Josie is soured on Christmas because she feels that she has been looking at holiday decorations since Labor Day, but when she is ordered to mystery shop two of the three holiday stores that have cropped up or lose her job, she does what any good mystery shopper would do, sucks it up, hopes for the best and brings a witness. The second shop is owned by her current boyfriend's rather colorful ex who would be more at home in a Halloween store than a Christmas shop. The experience is exactly what Josie expects and she writes an honest report, which as expected complicates everything. Viets doesn't stop there, she adds Josie's daughter's father into the mix who has recently been released from Canadian prison, where he has been serving a sentence for drug dealing. What I love about the book, besides that it's Christmas-y, is that even though there are several complex issues being addressed, it never gets messy that it feels like Viets forgets what she's doing and the plot never bogs down. The end of the book is wrapped up like a tidy Christmas package and leaves me waiting eagerly for the next book in series, just as it should. If you're a fan of the mystery shopper series, you definitely want to add this to your collection and if you're just starting, I suggest you begin with the first book in the series and I promise you'll be clamoring for this one.