I've heard that St. Louis native Elaine Viets took on a series of menial jobs to provide research for her Dead-End Job mystery series. In Dying to Call You, the third in the series, she so realistically portrays the work life of boiler-room telemarketers that reading the book before bed made me too depressed to sleep one night. But after a hiatus, I got back into the story: Although telemarketers deal with rejection and verbal abuse, Helen Hawthorne sells enough septic tank cleaners that she is sometimes invited to work in the more palatable part of the business, doing surveys. In the midst of doing one survey, she is certain that she has heard a woman being murdered. Even after calling the police, who report back that no one has been killed at the address corresponding to the phone number, she doggedly stays on the trail, even finding the name of a woman who has disappeared, and is presumably the murder victim.The story has a most interesting cast of characters, including Helen's landlord Margery, a couple of fellow tenants named Fred and Ethel Mertz, and Savannah, the sister of the missing woman, who brings household products along as weapons when potential witnesses need to be encouraged to talk. The story moves quickly, keeping me wondering just what would come next.
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