Book Review: Shop Till You Drop

Book: Shop Till You Drop (A Dead-End Job Mystery book #1) by Elaine Viets

Edition: Hardcover

Rating: 4 stars

Review:

Shop Till You Drop was a quick and interesting read but it does take a while before the mystery actually starts.

Set in South Florida, the story follows Helen Hawthorne who is working at Juliana's, a high-end boutique. But dealing with rude, vacuous and extremely demanding customers had Helen starting to wish for her old life that included a career with a six figure salary.

But she left her old life for a reason which was due to her divorce settlement which had Helen having to pay her sleazy cheating ex-husband half her pay. But she wasn't going to pay him anything and she left St. Louis and her old life behind. Now she's living in South Florida where she was trying to keep a low profile working dead-end jobs and getting paid off the books was the only way she could do that.

At the boutique it's not just the rude customers that Helen has to deal with, she's also starting to suspect the store manager Christina is up to something. Not only was she skimming money from customers but there's a possibility that she's selling drugs to some of the customers. But when Helen over hears Christina and one of the customers planning a murder, she didn't know what to do. She couldn't go to the police because she was sure they wouldn't believe her.

However, when Christina was later found murdered, that changed everything for Helen. Not only did she find out more about some the terrible things Christina was up to (such as extortion) but she had one of the detectives going after her. He was convinced she was involved in all the things Christina had been doing. To keep the police from zeroing in on her, Helen decided to find out who had murdered Christina. Not an easy task with so many potential suspects.

This was very fast-paced, it was also humorous despite having a rather dark tone at times as the mystery unfolded. But as good as the story and mystery were, I was disappointment by the small yet still substantial amount of racism that was so casually tossed around in this. From one of the characters lying to the police blaming two black guys for robbery and assault (that never happened) that resulted in no consequence for lying as well as another one of the characters using a slur for Hispanic people. There were quite a few other incidents and every time I read something I couldn't help wondering if it bothered other readers to see all this.

A good read with a smart and headstrong main character and quirky supporting characters but the racism really ruins the fun of reading this.