Five in the morning. My favorite time on the beach in Peerless Point, Florida. The ocean is smooth as gray silk. The eastern sky is velvety-black and the damp sand feels solid-squishy under my bare feet. It’s January. Right now, the silent beach and the silver sea are mine. Until the sun comes up about seven in the morning, and the tourists arrive. Then I head home.
My name is Mickey, and I’m an artist who lives at the Florodora Apartments, a beautiful 1920s relic. All six residents, including the landlady, Norah McCarthy, are a bit wacky. Norah calls me a guerilla artist because of my artistic pranks.
You know those plastic baby diaper changers on the wall in gas station bathrooms? I put a sign on one that said, “Place sacrifice here.” Careless smokers treat our beach like a giant ashtray. I put up these signs: “Please don’t drop your cigarette butts in the sand. We’re trying to get the fish to stop smoking.”
Now I’m using art to make people aware of the five million tons of trash floating in our ocean. It’s deadly. Sea turtles mistake plastic bags for their favorite food – jellyfish – and die. Ocean trash contaminates seafood, causes cancer, and looks ugly.
So I turn ocean trash into art. I gather my materials on Peerless Point beach. I’m a big, strong curly-haired woman. (Norah calls me curvy, but she’s being kind.) I walk miles collecting plastic straws, glass bottles and plastic caps in a rainbow of colors. Then I turn my finds into art.
I come across more than carelessly tossed plastic. I found a bikini bottom. A cell phone case covered in rhinestones and seaweed. And a pair of Oakley sunglasses with the lenses encrusted with barnacles. I thought about exhibiting the glasses as found art and calling them Sea View. I also found a single black high heel. When I picked it up, brownish legs waved at me. A hermit crab had found itself a stylish high-rise.
Some of my beach finds are too big to haul home: a queen-sized mattress, a flat-screen TV and a brown leather recliner. Somewhere a dad was missing his favorite chair.
But I’ll never forget what I found on the beach that February morning. I saw something purple waving in the breeze. A flag? A beach blanket? I hurried toward it.
At first, my eyes didn’t register the sight: A young blonde in her twenties was lying on the sand, her long hair spread out, her toes just touching the water. A long purple silk scarf wrapped around her neck.
Finally, it dawned on me. The young woman was dead. Strangled.
I heard someone screaming. That was me.
That murder forever changed our lives at the Florodora. The story became the mystery, Beach Blonde Betrayal.
BEACH BLONDE BETRAYAL
Series: A Florida Beach Mystery, Book 2
Genre: Traditional Mystery
Release: July 2026
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
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Life’s a beach . . . until you die.
Fear is growing in sun-soaked South Florida. Hot on the heels of local resident Gil Shecker saving an heiress’s cat from the jaws of an alligator, one of Norah McCarthy’s misfit residents at her Florodora apartment complex finds a body on the beach.
It appears a serial killer is brutally strangling young blonde women. When Gil is stabbed in what seems to be a separate attack, Norah is persuaded to investigate his murder. But while Norah uncovers Gil’s spine-tingling secrets, the beach body count is rising . . . At least one deadly critter is intent on terrorizing the local community, and this time it’s no alligator.
This addictive, quirky crime series set in Florida is perfect for fans of Carl Hiaasen and Tim Dorsey.
About the author
ELAINE VIETS is the author of thirty-six bestselling mysteries in five series. Beach Blonde Betrayal is the newest mystery in her Florida Beach series. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel said about Sex and Death on the Beach, the first novel in that series, “Viets enlivens her novel with characters who are as realistic as they are quirky.” Elaine’s also written the hardboiled Francesca Vierling novels, the traditional Dead-End Job books, the cozy Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper series, and the Angela Richman, Death Investigator, books. Elaine has won the Agatha, Anthony and Lefty awards and was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Malice Domestic mystery convention. Visit Elaine at her website, elaineviets.com.