Final Sail

March 5, 2012
In Viets’s enjoyable 11th Dead-End Job mystery (after 2011’s Pumped for Murder), Helen Hawthorne of Coronado Investigations in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., poses as spiritual adviser to a client’s dying elderly father, whose buxom new bride is suspected of instigating her geriatric honey’s demise. Helen then takes to the high seas as a yacht “stewardess” in order to search for a smuggler, leaving husband Phil Sagemont to prove that the wealthy intestate’s death wasn’t natural. The disappearance of Helen’s shipboard roommate and fellow stew, Louise, means more work for everyone. When another crew member claims to have witnessed Louise jumping ship to hitch a ride back to the States, Helen has to wonder if Louise left voluntarily, why’d she leave the cash and meds Helen uncovered in the cabin they shared? Viets presents an eye-opening exposé of spoiled yachters and the not-so-glamorous lives of their crews in this action-filled cozy. Agent: David Hendin, DH Literary.

May 1, 2012
A husband and wife detective duo teams up to split the work. Finally out from under the radar, Helen Hawthorne (Pumped for Murder, 2011, etc.) is eager to help her new husband, Phil, build Coronado Investigations' client base. Soon enough, they have a promising client. Rich, angry Violet Zerling hires the pair to prove that her father's sexy, young wife, Blossom, poisoned him. But the ink is barely dry on the mail-order ordination Helen uses to perform Arthur Zerling's funeral when Phil packs her off to pose as a stewardess on the Belted Earl, whose captain suspects one of his crew is smuggling emeralds. Helen is reduced once more to cleaning rich people's bathrooms and doing their copious loads of laundry--the same kind of menial tasks she lived on while hiding from ex-husband Rob. She can't decide whether she's more appalled by the mounds of cigar ash loudmouthed Scotty Crowne leaves for her to clean, the red wine his perky wife, Pepper, deliberately spills on the thousand-dollar sheets, or Earl Briggs' bejeweled wife, Beth, who lets her poodle piddle wherever. Just as Helen begins to bond with the two other stewardesses, Louise, the younger, jumps ship. Mira, the senior stewardess, insists that storm-weary Louise hitched a ride home on a fishing charter, but Helen suspects foul play rather than foul weather. While Helen hunts hidden gems aboard the Earl, Phil's busy tracking Blossom, ready to wrap the case the minute his wife makes port. Doubling the mysteries doesn't really double the fun in Viets' convoluted eleventh.

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May 1, 2012

While PI Helen Hawthorne works the cruise ship circuit, her husband Phil Sagemont contends with problems on land. Both are masters at working undercover in number 11 of this fun series (Pumped for Murder).

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