Elaine Viets

Blogging at Fresh Fiction

Elaine Viets | The Touring Author: How not to look like Mommy dressed you.
May 15, 2008
I was in a black mood. I was planning to pack for the June tour for my seventh Dead-End Job mystery, "Clubbed to Death  Read More...

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.

Elaine's short story, "Red Meat," is in BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS, the Mystery Writers of America anthology edited by Lawrence Block. "Sex and Bingo" is featured in the HIGH STAKES gambling anthology. Both are published by Berkley Prime Crime.

She has also written four critically acclaimed Francesca Vierling mysteries.

Elaine has been on the national board of the Mystery Writers of America and a member of Sisters in Crime. The St. Louis native now lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with her husband, actor Don Crinklaw, where they collect speeding tickets.

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