Pumped for Murder: A Dead-End Job Mystery

By Elaine Viets

Hardcover, 292 pages, $23.95

Body builders go wild in "Pumped For Murder," a terrifically fun beach read by Elaine Viets, the queen of cozy humor.

Helen Hawthorne and her new hubby, Phil, score their new PI agency’s first two cases in this fast-paced, tightly plotted title. They solve an old murder and a new murder in this 10th Dead-End Job Mystery.

“I love that Florida private investigators are licensed by the Department of Agriculture. They regulate vegetables, fruit, milk, pawnbrokers, dance studios, shellfish and pest control,” Helen says.

“I assume we come under pest control.”

Helen and Phil recently opened Coronado Investigations in their apartment complex (that looks like a white ocean liner) in a room where a murder had occurred. And, the new private investigators land their first two jobs while sitting around the pool. Not a bad start, eh?

Their first client is an auto mechanic who is convinced that his brother didn’t commit suicide 25 years ago. The second client is a wife who bought her husband a gym membership and now thinks her gym rat husband is cheating on her.

Since Helen wrote the book on working at low-paying jobs, and she’s about to take on another one — as a receptionist at Fantastic Fitness, the local gym where her client’s husband has been working out seven days a week.

Her husband, Phil, takes the lead on investigating the unusual circumstances of a 25-year-old death that was ruled a suicide. But the husband-and-wife team wind up crossing paths on their two seemingly unrelated cases.

When Helen describes the fitness center as a gym on steroids, that’s just the beginning of Helen’s wickedly funny adventure working at a fitness center that prides itself in putting new body-building trophies in the trophy case.

“Sweat, sex, ambition and half-naked people are a dangerous combination. We have cheating couples here. We have ‘roid-raging bodybuilders who want to win medals. We have people working out practically naked. See that woman over there on the treadmill? She’s wearing more makeup than clothes.”

No pain, no gain? Helen says she’s working in an air-conditioned torture chamber making minimum wage for maximum pain, when she’s told she best shape up for her job. Or be shipped out.

Living in Florida has its drawbacks — especially when traveling around in a car without air-conditioning.

“Heat shimmered on the road, and the air was thick with car exhaust and the stink of melting asphalt.” Helen said she felt like she was on a griddle instead of a federal highway.

But her new husband, who seems oblivious to the scorching heat, takes pity on her, and Helen gets a white PT Cruiser she nicknames The Ice Box.

I’ve read every book in both of Viets’ two series: her A Dead-End Job Mystery and Mystery Shopper, and I’m hard pressed to pick which series or which title I’ve enjoyed the most. While many authors ebb and flow with their efforts, every story Viets dreams up is better than the last.

Take this delightful page-turner to the pool, and enjoy with a drink that comes with an umbrella. You’ll fit right into the nightly ritual at The Coronado.

Lisa Allmendinger is a regional reporter for AnnArbor.com. She can be reached at lisaallmendinger@annarbor.com. In addition, each Wednesday she reviews a cozy mystery in her column called “Cozy Corner.”