An Uplifting Murder:
Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper
By Elaine Viets
Paperback, 294 pages, $7.99

Come on, admit it, haven’t you always secretly wondered who these mystery shoppers are, where they go, and what they are looking for in those stores?

In this sixth installment of Elaine Viets’ delightful mystery shopping series, titled “An Uplifting Murder,” readers vicariously experience shopping trips to an upscale lingerie store, a chain restaurant that specializes in vegetables and a quick hair cut joint.

Join single mom Josie Marcus, as she takes you on a journey that’s both funny and touching in Viets’ cleverly plotted and fast-paced, cozy mystery series, which takes place near St. Louis.

You’ll live vicariously through Josie’s blush with the perfectly fitted bra, and chuckle out loud at her trip to Veggie Madness Restaurant. Then there’s her assignment to quick hair cut at Cheap Chic, a place promises customers won’t wait more than 15 minutes to get in the chair.

"I’m supposed to strip naked for a mystery-shopping job?” she asks Harry the Horrible, her flabby, greasy food eating boss.

“Just your top half,” he says. “And there are no men around, it’s all girls.”

Or, when the boss from hell describes her second shopping assignment as “Not just (eating) broccoli. Vegetables. Some broccoli is included in the sampling bar, but you won’t be eating all broccoli.”

Josie hates broccoli, and so does her coming-of-age daughter, Amelia, but a paycheck is a paycheck. And cash-strapped Josie needs to make enough money for the basics that the non-scholarship students at Barrington School for boys and girls take for granted. She didn’t want her daughter to feel different than the other kids — even if she was at the exclusive school on scholarship.

So to make a living, Josie’s forced to taste dishes such as “Krazy For Kale,” and “Zucchini Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” But you have to read this latest title to truly appreciate what’s involved in her mystery shopping assignments.

You’ll visit Desiree Lingerie, a fancy ladies’ underwear chain, in snooty mall Plaza Venetia, where the owners want her to check out a complaint against one of the saleswomen.

On the upside, Josie will get paid and take home a perfectly fit bra; on the downside, she must exonerate her high school gym teacher from a murder charge — when one of her former high school classmates (and a Mean Girl at that) is found dead in a restroom in the mall with her wrists bound by a fancy new bra.

Josie lives downstairs from her mother in a modest home in Maplewood, a suburb outside St. Louis where “St. Louisans do not go for public displays of emotion, except when the Cardinals are in the play-offs.”

Her best friend, Alyce, lives in an exclusive gated community, and the two are today’s version of Thelma and Louise as they team-up as delightfully hilarious crime-solvers.

I love this series, and I’ve read every one.

“An Uplifting Murder” will bring you back to the good, the bad and the embarrassing of getting your first bra regardless of whether you’re a double A or a double D.

And you’ll smile as you follow the developing relationship between Josie and her new boyfriend, veterinarian Ted Scottsmeyer.

“It’s been three months,” Josie says. “My daughter likes him. My mother likes him. Even our cat likes him.” However, once-bitten in a bad marriage, Josie’s not so sure if the animal doctor is the Real Deal.

Once you’ve read the latest in this series, you’ll want to go back for more. There’s “Dying in Style,” “High Heels are Murder,” “Accessory to Murder,” “Murder with All the Trimmings” and “The Fashion Hound Mystery.”

In addition, Viets is the author of another terrific series called the Dead End Job mysteries. I’ve read and loved all nine of those, too.

Lisa Allmendinger is a reporter for AnnArbor.com and a voracious cozy mystery reader. Her book reviews are published each Wednesday at Cozy Corner.