Tedium is part of even the best job and I should know: I have it. Everyone's fantasized about doing something more exciting or important, like solving a murder mystery. Here are some of those fantasies brought to the page, between conference calls of course, often with hilarious results.
Chuck Restic is an HR exec in Adam Walker Phillips' The Big Con. He's in the middle of terminating a contract with a motivational company when that organization's employees end up missing or murdered. The plot will keep you guessing as Chuck and his untrustworthy sidekick scour southern California for clues and the portrayals of corporate maneuvering and vapid jargon will keep you chuckling through this snarky whodunit.
Dahlia Moss is working on her private investigator's license, so she jumps at the chance to commit corporate espionage in The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss by Max Wirestone. On her first day of work at Cahaba Apps (a video game company) however, she discovers a corpse in a closet. Kicking into high gear, Dahlia gets experience for her desired profession and makes plenty of comic observations about the modern tech industry along the way.
The prolific Karen G. McCullough provides a window into the trade show industry in A Gift for Murder. Heather McNeil is an assistant to the director of the D.C. Commerce and Market Show Center, and that means troubleshooting, listening to endless complaints from exhibitors, and dealing with a truly cranky popcorn machine. Heather adds sleuthing to her job description when one of her exhibitors ends up dead and she doesn't agree with the police's choice of suspect. Heather sorts through the suspicious characters the victim had as business contacts in this charming cozy.
In an attempt to evade further humiliation in Ottawa, paper shuffler Charlie Hillier takes an assignment in Cuba in Nick Wilkshire's Escape to Havana. However, the humdrum life of a Foreign Affairs employee in Canada is somewhat different than the hard-partying, cocaine-discovering, light-socket-fixing existence 90 miles off the Florida coast. While the mystery is not always the center of the book (Charlie still has to attend inane meetings, after all), those willing to just go along for the ride will not be disappointed.
What books do you use to beat the team-building-exercise blues? Tell us in the comments.
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