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World Hotels - Murder With All the Trimmings: Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper (Josie, Marcus Mystery Shopper)
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List Price: $6.99
Our Price: $6.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Signet
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780451225481
ISBN: 0451225481
Label: Signet
Manufacturer: Signet
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2008-11-04
Publisher: Signet
Studio: Signet
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Editorial Reviews:
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A humbug of a Shopping mystery...
From The Anthony and Agatha Award-Winning Author of Accessory to Murder
Includes insider shopping tips!
Mystery shopper Josie Marcus doesn’t get the appeal of the year-round Christmas shop. But when three such holiday houses pop up within two blocks, she’s assigned to rate them anonymously.
Easy enough, Josie thinks, until she realizes that shoppers at one store are finding a strange—even deadly—secret ingredient in their holiday cake. And Josie must get to the bottom of it all before someone else becomes a Christmas spirit.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Comment: I have enjoyed every one of Ms. Viets' previous books (although the Helen Hawthorne series is by far my favorite). The Josie Marcus series has been (up until now) almost as enjoyable. I especially enjoy the descriptions of "mystery shopping" (a career I never knew existed) and her detective experiences with her side kick Alyce. Ms. Viets has a wonderful ability to pinpoint and parody so many different aspects of America. Each of her books is an amused, cynical vignette of some facet of American culture.
However, this book presents a slightly different venue, with the focus primarily on personal relationships-specifically, Josie's worthless ex-lover (and her daughter's father), her current lover( anlong with his loathsome daughter)and Josie's bratty daughter Amelia (my least favorite character). I read Ms. Viets books for amusement and entertainment, not for insight into fictional psyches. I'm not negatively critcizing Ms. Viets for deepening her characters, but it's not why I read this series.
Just my opinion, of course, but I miss the humor and cynicism that are such outstanding features of the previous books.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mystery with holiday trimmings
Comment: I'd probably be a card-carrying grinch if they issued cards for that, but I enjoyed this Christmas-themed mystery in Elaine Viets' mystery shopper series. Protagonist Josie Marcus is smart, funny, and likable, character flaws and all. She's raising her nine year old daughter Amelia on her slim earnings as a mystery shopper, with help from her mother who lives in the other half of her St. Louis duplex.
In this book, some of Josie's past decisions cause trouble at home. She lied to Amelia by saying Amelia's dad Nate was dead, when in fact he had been imprisoned in Canada for drug dealing by the time the girl was born. She's shocked when a very live, and actively alcoholic, Jake turns up on their doorstep. Amelia is thrilled with Jake and alienated by Josie's lies, and Josie's terrified by Jake's threats to take Amelia back to Canada.
In the meantime Josie's hunky plumber boyfriend has his own troubles. His skanky ex-girlfriend, the mother of his sullen sociopathic teenaged daughter, has opened a sleazy Christmas store franchise which is doomed to fail, as it's next to two competing, and better, stores.
Josie's mystery shopping assignments, her boyfriend's bad news ex and offspring, Jake and his scary drug dealing associates, and the suddenly rebellious Amelia, come together in a series of events which include obscene Christmas ornaments, commercial sabotage, fundamentalist pickets at the sleazy Christmas store, antifreeze in the chocolate sauce, and murder.
Josie doesn't always make the best decisions, but she's brave and resourceful. Viets creates some real suspense with this story, which was a very enjoyable read on a cold winter's night.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Christmas mystery
Comment: "Murder with All the Trimmings" by Elaine Viets is an entertaining very real book. The heroine, Josie Marcus, is a mystery shopper. That is a person who buys a predetermined object in a store, just as anyone would, and fills out a form about service, quality, ambiance, etc. (How do I get a job like that?) Josie is a single mother who is fortunate enough to have her mother living upstairs. Ms Marcus is very impulsive and, while not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, is much like any one of us or our best friends.
Unfortunately, Josie's ex husband , who had been in jail in Canada, shows up drunk on her doorstep. Even more unfortunately, Josie had preferred to tell her daughter that her father was dead, rather than telling her the truth that he was a jailed drug dealer. Obviously, this alienated Josie's nine-year-old daughter who acted out much as any one of us might have and Josie apparently did when she was young. (As outsiders we can see Josie turning into her mother, as any of us would.)
The mystery is almost incidental to the interaction of the characters. This interaction is perfectly real and absolutely terrific. If you don't see either yourself or people you know in these characters, you should get out more. The mystery itself is less realistic which is why the book only gets 4 stars. It is definitely a good read. I like this series.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Yay for a good Christmas mystery!
Comment: I have all of Elaine Viets mystery shopper and dead end job mysteries and I love them all. I have to say by far, this is the best of the mystery shopper series. I have noticed that more and more mystery series are going for holiday themes, i.e. Joanna Carl's The Chocolate Snowman Murders and Shirley Murphy's 2007 Cat Deck the Halls Joe Grey Mystery. I cannot speak for the Murphy mystery as I have not read it yet, but I can safely say Viets beats out Carl's Snowman Murders for the better holiday mystery.
Josie Marcus is a loveable protaganist as a single mom and amateur sleuth and the recurring cast of characters is what holds the wonderful series together. In this book, Josie is soured on Christmas because she feels that she has been looking at holiday decorations since Labor Day, but when she is ordered to mystery shop two of the three holiday stores that have cropped up or lose her job, she does what any good mystery shopper would do, sucks it up, hopes for the best and brings a witness. The second shop is owned by her current boyfriend's rather colorful ex who would be more at home in a Halloween store than a Christmas shop. The experience is exactly what Josie expects and she writes an honest report, which as expected complicates everything. Viets doesn't stop there, she adds Josie's daughter's father into the mix who has recently been released from Canadian prison, where he has been serving a sentence for drug dealing.
What I love about the book, besides that it's Christmas-y, is that even though there are several complex issues being addressed, it never gets messy that it feels like Viets forgets what she's doing and the plot never bogs down. The end of the book is wrapped up like a tidy Christmas package and leaves me waiting eagerly for the next book in series, just as it should. If you're a fan of the mystery shopper series, you definitely want to add this to your collection and if you're just starting, I suggest you begin with the first book in the series and I promise you'll be clamoring for this one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: exciting amateur sleuth
Comment: Mystery shopper Josie Marcus is having problems getting into the holiday spirits. Her boyfriend Mike invested $20,000 in the mother of his daughter Heather's- year round Christmas store. Josie does not like Heather because she is nasty towards Josie's younger daughter Amelia. Naughty or Nice is not doing well because a rival shop Elsie's Elf House opened nearby and a third Christmas store is in the same tiny vicinity.
Josie has no time to worry about Mike, his investment or his cruel daughter. The father of her child Nate has just been released from a Canadian prison after a decade of incarceration for selling drugs. He threatens Josie with a custody suit and implies he could abduct their daughter. They have a shouting match that Josie's neighbor hears. When a drunken Nate comes to Josie's house with a chocolate Santa, Josie refuses to let him enter. He eats the pastry; later Josie finds him unconscious. At the hospital, a toxicologist report says he imbibed anti-freeze just like a woman who ate a the same pstry from the same place. Josie and Mike are under suspicion so she seeks proof to back up her theory as to who the killer is.
Elaine Viets writes exciting amateur sleuth mysteries filled with believable characters; the recurring cast starting with Josie adds a sense of friendship that in turn embellishes the feeling of realism. A single mom, Josie knows she must care for Amanda first even before her desires. It is interesting how "blind" Mike is to his daughter's antipathy towards his girlfriend and her offspring. Nate is slime and in death he still causes the heroine problems. Although the whodunit is a bit light, the relationships crises add delightful trimmings to the murder investigation.
Harriet Klausner
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