Synopses & Reviews
Shhh...in the newest hardcover in the national bestselling Dead-End Job Mystery series, Helen Hawthorne quietly goes undercover at a local library to search for a missing masterpiece.
Wealthy socialite Elizabeth Cateman Kingsley has hired Helen to find a missing John Singer Sargent painting, owned by her late father. After his death, many of Davis Catemans books were donated to the Flora Park library, and his daughter suspects the small watercolorworth millionswas tucked away inside one of those dusty tomes.
To search the stacks, Helen applies for a position as a library volunteer and discovers the library director has a catalog of complaintsfrom a mischievous calico cat named Paris to the mysterious disappearance of various items that some of the more imaginative staff are attributing to a ghost haunting the building.
While her husband Phil sticks his neck out to find a missing necklace, Helen is on her own with no one to lend her a hand. When a dead body turns up in a parking lot, it appears someone is willing to go to any lengths to keep the treasure in the library quiet. Now Helen is bound and determined to find the killer as well as the paintingbefore shes taken out of circulation herself.
Review
Praise for Catnapped!
“Catnapped! moves at a brisk pace as Helen learns the difference between pet owners and those who pamper their star felines to the extreme. An intriguing subplot…adds an extra boost to Vietss witty story.”—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“Lively.…The behind-the-scenes look at the show cat world is worth the price of admission alone in this witty cozy.” —Publishers Weekly
"Cozy mystery tales just can't get any better than Catnapped!"—Fresh Fiction
"A perfect beach read and most enjoyable." —Spinetingler Magazine
Review
Praise for the Dead-End Job Mysteries by Elaine Viets, Winner of the Anthony Award and the Agatha Award: “A stubborn and intelligent heroine...a wonderful South Florida setting.”—Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of the Sookie Stackhouse Novels
“Clever . . . The real draw, though, is Viets snappy critique of South Florida.”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
“Wickedly funny.” —The Miami Herald
“Lively plots and broad humor...highly entertaining.” —South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Synopsis
The fur is really flying in this Dead-End Job Mystery from the national bestselling author of Checked Out. No more pussyfooting around! Husband-and-wife PI team Helen Hawthorne and Phil Sagemont have barely scratched the surface of the world of show cats when a cornered kitty kidnappers claws come out....
The one thing celebrity Trish Barrymore and her no-account accountant husband, Mort, can agree on in their bitter divorce is shared cat custody. But when Mort is found brained by a mahogany cat tower and their pedigreed Chartreux show cat goes missing, Trish calls on Helen and Phil to find the feline filcher and let the cat out of the bag.
Discovering that Mort had some shady dealings within cat show circles, Helen goes undercover as an assistant for a woman who shows prizewinning Persians. As Phil and she get deeper into a high-pressure world of primping, posing, and purring to collar a killer, they get caught up in a cat-and-mouse game where the stakes are literally life and death....
About the Author
Elaine Viets has actually worked many of those dead-end jobs in her mystery novels, just like her character Helen Hawthorne. Recent titles in the Dead-End Job Mystery series include Checked Out, Catnapped!, Board Stiff, and Final Sail. She is also the author of the Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper series, including A Dog Gone Murder, the Francesca Vierling Mysteries, and numerous short stories. Elaine has won an Anthony Award and an Agatha Award.