Elaine Viets - Mystery Writer

We Live to Serve

By Elaine Viets

Helen Hawthorne and I worked in customer service at a country club for my latest Dead-End Job mystery. We dealt with every kind of complaint you could imagine – and a few you couldn’t.
     How about the husband who didn’t want his wife to get a copy of the club bill – because he’d taken his mistress to lunch there and charged it?
     Or the woman who was unhappy because she’d spilled soft-serve ice cream on her designer outfit. She wanted the club to pay for her dry cleaning. She said it was our fault the bowls were “too small.”
     We were not permitted to tell the woman she should have taken a smaller portion. Our jobs demanded that we treat club members with the utmost courtesy, no matter how badly they treated us.
     This Dead-End Job mystery is “Clubbed to Death,” and Publishers Weekly was kind enough to call this a “superior cozy series.”
     The Superior Club was also the name of the novel’s mythical country club.
     We watched millionaires shovel cheap cookies into Prada purses, and folks with six-figure incomes order sliced lemons and make their own lemonade at the table with the free water and sugar packets.
     We had to learn to tactfully handle the chronic complainers. Anyone who worked customer service has a few key phrases they use. In “Clubbed to Death,” Phil, Helen’s lover, and Margery, her landlady, outlined them for her after a bad day at the Superior Club.
     “Next time Mrs. Rich screams at you, tell her, ‘Rest assured that topic will be brought up to the staff,’ ” Margery said. “It will, too. You’ll warn them that she’s a bitch on wheels. But she doesn’t know that. Mrs. Rich is happy because she thinks she got someone in trouble.”
     “Here’s another good one,” Phil said. “I use it all the time: ‘Don’t you worry, ma’am. There will be a note in the file on this incident.’ ”
     “You’re not lying. The note will warn the staff that Mrs. Rich is a real problem.”
     “If the complainer is halfway reasonable,” Margery said, “you try this one: ‘I understand. I agree with you. But the rules say . . .’ ”
     “How do you handle the line that always makes me grit my teeth: ‘I’m a doctor.’ The doctor acts as if he expects the yacht club basin to part so he can walk across it. I’d like to say, ‘So what?’ but that would get me fired.”
     “No, no, Helen,” Phil said. “You have to tweak their noses, not hit them on the head with a brick. Next time someone says, ‘I’m a doctor,’ you say, ‘ PhD or MD?’ Deliver it very seriously. That always flummoxes them.”
     Helen laughed, but it was clear she wasn’t finding the lesson funny. Phil looked at her and said, “You don’t believe a word of this, do you?”
     “I hate this job,” Helen said. “I hate these pointless people.”
     “But you like combat,” Phil said. “Why do the members upset you so much?”
     “I don’t know,” Helen said, miserably. “I don’t understand them. I don’t understand myself. I guess I’m not a Superior person.”
     Helen went to work, determined not to let the job get her down. Her resolution lasted about ten minutes. What tipped Helen over the edge was the woman who screamed, “I‘ll have your job.”
     “I hope so,” Helen told her. “You deserve it.”

CLUBBED TO DEATH: A Dead-End Job Mystery, is $21.95 in hardcover from NAL/Obsidian. The ISBN is 978-0-451-22394-4.

Killer Cuts: A Dead-End Job mystery

He sees us at our worst. He listens to our problems. He always tells us we look good, even when we know it’s not true. Spend a few hours with him, and we leave looking younger and glowing.
      Who is this magic man?
      For many women, he is our hairstylist. If we’re lucky, we also have a husband or lover with similar powers.
    “Killer Cuts,” my new Dead-End Job mystery, is about the intimate relationship many women have with their stylists. In “Killer Cuts,” the flamboyant Cuban-born stylist Miguel Angel works his magic at a Fort Lauderdale salon to revive flagging acting careers, and make ordinary women into the stylish “Miguel’s Angels.”
      Because beauty is a high-risk business, it’s no surprise that Miguel is mixed up in a murder, and so is his assistant, Helen Hawthorne. Helen adores her boss and believes he is innocent. But she also knows he evaded the cops at the murder scene by dressing in drag. Now she is on the trail of a murderer who wears spike heels – while she plans her own wedding to Phil.
      Don’t miss the eighth Dead-End Job Mystery. Publishers Weekly says, “Viets keeps the action popping until the cliff-hanging ending, as Helen ignores signs that her best-laid plans have a black hole connected to the past she’s been running from for years.”