"Fine amateur sleuth"

Helen Hawthorne caught her unemployed husband having ﷯﷯sex﷯﷯ with their next door neighbor and in a rage she wrecked his SUV. The Judge ordered her to pay alimony because her spouse spent the last few years taking care of her and their home while she earned a six figure income. An irate Helen refuses to pay one cent so she leaves St. Louis relocating in Fort Lauderdale where she accepts dead- end jobs that pay under the table.

Her current job is a telemarketer at Tank Titan System Cleaner where the callers who pick up curse, hang up, and general humiliate her because they think she is as a low life. During a phone survey with Hank Asparth, he places the instrument down without hanging up; thus she overhears him arguing with a woman until she realizes that he strangled her. Helen calls the police, but they find nothing suspicions. She can't let it go so she calls the victim's sister Savannah to only to learn her sibling has been missing for several days. Helen believes that Savannah's sister Laredo is dead and plans to learn the truth.

DYING TO CALL YOU stars one of the liveliest audacious and entertaining heroines to grace an amateur sleuth tale. She chose to become a fugitive because she believes in justice and opts to expose herself for the same belief. From going topless to stealing from the mob, this protagonist will do whatever it takes to prove Hank killed Laredo. The investigation is cleverly designed adding to the proof that Elaine Viets is a talented storyteller who keeps her readers engaged.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted September 10, 2004

Summary

Once on the fast track to success, Helen Hawthorne is going nowhere faster. Forced to trade in her chic life for a shabby one, she's now on the run, jumping from city to city and dead-end job to dead-end job, trying to stay one step ahead of her past...

Helen Hawthorne has just found her new calling...as a telemarketer. And it's not long before she's disrupting dinners all over the country with her pesky calls. But during a phone survey to the home of Henry Asporth, she's the one who gets an earful when she overhears an argument, followed by a scream—and then, dead air. Was someone being strangled? Or was it just a loud movie? Helen searches the office computer database to learn more about Asporth and the much younger woman he allegedly lived with... before she disappeared. And soon, Helen's in over her head and soon chasing clues, and trying to avoid a close call... with a killer.