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DEATH ON A PLATTER
DEATH ON A PLATTER
BY ELAINE VIETS
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Josie Marcus plans to savor sampling the local St. Louis cuisine for a City Eats food tour. She mystery-shops St. Louis food for this national tour, relishing everything from chocolate to St. Louis pizza to pig ear sandwiches. Okay, she doesn’t exactly relish the pig ears. But she is paid to eat them.
Josie’s appetite is ruined when she tests toasted ravioli at Tillie’s Off the Hill and a customer is poisoned. Tillie, an old friend of Josie’s mother, is the prime suspect. Josie has to find the killer – and maybe find out what her boyfriend has in mind regarding their future. Was the victim the real target-or is someone trying to ruin Tillie's reputation? It's up to Josie to find a killer who has no reservations about preparing a dish to die for...
Josie’s appetite is ruined when she tests toasted ravioli at Tillie’s Off the Hill and a customer is poisoned. Tillie, an old friend of Josie’s mother, is the prime suspect. Josie has to find the killer – and maybe find out what her boyfriend has in mind regarding their future. Was the victim the real target-or is someone trying to ruin Tillie's reputation? It's up to Josie to find a killer who has no reservations about preparing a dish to die for...
AN EXCERPT FROM DEATH ON A PLATTER:
Chapter 1
“You want me to eat brains? Do I look like a zombie?” Josie Marcus asked.
“Not raw brains,” Harry the Horrible said. “Or people brains. These are cow brains. I want you to eat fried brain sandwiches. You’re supposed to mystery-shop restaurants for a food tour. Brains are real St. Louis food.”
“They’re disgusting,” Josie said.
So was Harry, Josie’s boss and the head of Suttin Services in St. Louis. Harry loved to give Josie awful mystery-shopping assignments. He never forgave her for reporting a rude saleswoman who turned out to be Harry’s niece.
“Not raw brains,” Harry the Horrible said. “Or people brains. These are cow brains. I want you to eat fried brain sandwiches. You’re supposed to mystery-shop restaurants for a food tour. Brains are real St. Louis food.”
“They’re disgusting,” Josie said.
So was Harry, Josie’s boss and the head of Suttin Services in St. Louis. Harry loved to give Josie awful mystery-shopping assignments. He never forgave her for reporting a rude saleswoman who turned out to be Harry’s niece.
To finish reading this excerpt from DEATH ON A PLATTER, visit Elaine Viets' website HERE.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
It’s midnight on a moonless night in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. From my office window I see boats with no running lights slipping down the Intracoastal Waterway. What illegal cargo are they carrying: drugs, guns, people? I’ve used them all in my Dead-End Job mysteries.
Across a canal, my window overlooks a million-dollar condo where mysterious neighbors hold parties in the dead of night. Everyone dresses in black evening clothes. They became the inspiration for my short story, “Vampire Hours.”
South Florida is the setting for my Dead-End Job mysteries and many short stories. It’s the inspiration that feeds my dark side.
My roots are in the Midwest, where I set my Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper series. St. Louis is very different from Fort Lauderdale. Its people have pasts, families and neighborhoods. If someone new moves into a community, a St. Louisan can make a few calls and find out where the newcomer went to school, if he has a drinking problem, if she’s divorced, and where the person works. It’s a big small town.
Not so in South Florida, where one of my snowbird neighbors turned out to be a drug dealer. I should have known that a pilot didn’t make enough money to own a Porsche, a Harley, a state-of-the-art sound system and a beachside condo unless he was flying in a very special cargo. Florida’s rootlessness and St. Louis’s structured life are important facets of my series.
These two locations drive my mysteries and occasional fictional forays into other worlds. My vampire short stories take place in Fort Lauderdale. My paranormal story, “The Bedroom Door,” is set in St. Louis and features a woman based on my Grandmother Vierling, who swore she had second sight.
Josie Marcus is a St. Louis woman. She’s connected to her community, the suburb of Maplewood. She has a mother, a daughter, and a job, where she fights for better treatment for the mythical Mrs. Minivan, the American shopper.
“Death on a Platter” is my seventh Josie Marcus mystery. The eleventh Dead-End Job mystery, “Final Sail,” will be out May 1, 2012. In a good series – and I hope mine fit that description – the characters grow and change.
Josie, a single mother with an eleven-year-old daughter, has a talent for friendship as well as solving mysteries. She tries to help her daughter develop into an independent young woman. She fights her own tendency to fall in love with the wrong men. As a member of the sandwich generation, Josie has to care for her mother as well as her daughter.
Helen Hawthorne is a St. Louis woman on the run in South Florida. After nine Dead-End Jobs, she changed the course of her life. Helen and I both worked those same awful jobs from salesclerk to telemarketer. In her tenth adventure, Helen and Phil, her new husband, open a private eye agency called Coronado Investigations and open new possibilities to keep the series fresh.
Don’t worry, Dead-End Job fans. Helen is still working those low-paying jobs, only now she goes undercover as part of her private eye investigation. I’m going to classes at private investigators conferences and asking private eyes I know for their help. I also took the Death Investigators course at St. Louis University to give the series authenticity.
I promise you that some things will not change. Both series will still be as entertaining as I can make them.
Across a canal, my window overlooks a million-dollar condo where mysterious neighbors hold parties in the dead of night. Everyone dresses in black evening clothes. They became the inspiration for my short story, “Vampire Hours.”
South Florida is the setting for my Dead-End Job mysteries and many short stories. It’s the inspiration that feeds my dark side.
My roots are in the Midwest, where I set my Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper series. St. Louis is very different from Fort Lauderdale. Its people have pasts, families and neighborhoods. If someone new moves into a community, a St. Louisan can make a few calls and find out where the newcomer went to school, if he has a drinking problem, if she’s divorced, and where the person works. It’s a big small town.
Not so in South Florida, where one of my snowbird neighbors turned out to be a drug dealer. I should have known that a pilot didn’t make enough money to own a Porsche, a Harley, a state-of-the-art sound system and a beachside condo unless he was flying in a very special cargo. Florida’s rootlessness and St. Louis’s structured life are important facets of my series.
These two locations drive my mysteries and occasional fictional forays into other worlds. My vampire short stories take place in Fort Lauderdale. My paranormal story, “The Bedroom Door,” is set in St. Louis and features a woman based on my Grandmother Vierling, who swore she had second sight.
Josie Marcus is a St. Louis woman. She’s connected to her community, the suburb of Maplewood. She has a mother, a daughter, and a job, where she fights for better treatment for the mythical Mrs. Minivan, the American shopper.
“Death on a Platter” is my seventh Josie Marcus mystery. The eleventh Dead-End Job mystery, “Final Sail,” will be out May 1, 2012. In a good series – and I hope mine fit that description – the characters grow and change.
Josie, a single mother with an eleven-year-old daughter, has a talent for friendship as well as solving mysteries. She tries to help her daughter develop into an independent young woman. She fights her own tendency to fall in love with the wrong men. As a member of the sandwich generation, Josie has to care for her mother as well as her daughter.
Helen Hawthorne is a St. Louis woman on the run in South Florida. After nine Dead-End Jobs, she changed the course of her life. Helen and I both worked those same awful jobs from salesclerk to telemarketer. In her tenth adventure, Helen and Phil, her new husband, open a private eye agency called Coronado Investigations and open new possibilities to keep the series fresh.
Don’t worry, Dead-End Job fans. Helen is still working those low-paying jobs, only now she goes undercover as part of her private eye investigation. I’m going to classes at private investigators conferences and asking private eyes I know for their help. I also took the Death Investigators course at St. Louis University to give the series authenticity.
I promise you that some things will not change. Both series will still be as entertaining as I can make them.
MY THOUGHTS/REVIEW ON DEATH ON A PLATTER:
DEATH ON A PLATTER, another Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper Novel, by Elaine Viets, is perfect as the days grow cool and you just want to literally curl up with a good book somewhere (you don’t have to have a fire but it would be nice). This was my first Josie Marcus book and it stands alone just fine as Viets gives enough background to bring new readers into Josie’s life. As a mystery shopper visiting restaurants (in my dreams) and trying all kinds of foods, Elaine Viets uses very colorful description thus creating wonderful mental images to bring the reader into the story. With her well crafted narrative and delightfully developed, interesting characters, I found myself easily turning the pages to see if Josie would solve the mystery in this one. With St. Louis as the setting, Elaine Viets creates another character as she does such a great job with her descriptions that I felt like I was there and so it becomes as much a part of the story as the people do. Josie goes about solving the mystery as well as making you laugh out loud in places, but I have to admit, it wasn’t an easy mystery to solve. Viets keeps readers turning pages to figure out who the murderer was as the plot turned and twisted this way and that. This was truly a fast and fun read. I know I will look forward to reading more of Elaine Viets’ books in the future.
GIVEAWAY
THANKS TO KAITLYN AND THE GOOD
FOLKS AT BERKLEY/NAL, I HAVE ONE
COPY OF THIS FUN MYSTERY,
DEATH ON A PLATTER, TO GIVE
AWAY TO ONE LUCKY WINNER
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