Title: Getting Old Is Murder
Author: Rita Lakin
ISBN: 9780440242581
Publisher: Dell, 2005
Mass Market Paperback, 336 pages
Genre: Cozy Mystery, #1 Gladdy Gold mystery
Rating: C
Source: Paperback Swap
First Line: The poison was in the pot roast.
75-year-old Gladdy Gold of the Lanai Gardens in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, finds herself a self-professed private investigator when her friends begin dying in very similar ways. Her credentials? More than thirty years of reading mysteries. (Works for me....)
Gladdy and the rest of her friends squeeze sleuthing into their daily round of poolside chatter, early-bird specials, and grocery shopping while one of their neighbors in Lanai Gardens, Greta Kronk, seems to be going out of her way to become Suspect #1.
This book contains both a cast of characters, which I didn't refer to after an amusing initial reading, and a glossary of Yiddish terms, which I found to be very useful. The identity of the killer seemed rather obvious to me, and the humor often fell flat.
Humor is very subjective. You may think Gladdy and her friends going shopping and dining and purposely driving sales clerks and waiters crazy is hilarious. I don't. I've spent almost all my working life in customer service dealing with people like this. If it's not purposely done, it's all right and I don't turn a hair. If people who can't seem to find anything better to do with their free time purposely come in to create as many problems as possible, steam starts leaking out of my ears. See? I told you my reason was very subjective!
If Getting Old Is Murder sounds like your cup of tea, enjoy! As for me, if I want to read about Senior Citizen Sleuths, I'd rather read something like Mike Befeler's Retirement Homes Are Murder.
