Friday, December 31, 2010

Getting Old Is Murder by Rita Lakin

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.


  1. Oh, I was so hoping this series would be good, if only because I was hoping someone would do the Miss Marple thing in a modern way. But I agree with you about the customer service thing! That would have driven me right up the wall as well, and I haven't even worked in the service industry before.

  2. Mystica-- Abit, but not really enough.

    Anastasia-- But I'll bet you've been standing in line behind such folks!

  3. My parents are unfortunately pretty bad at being polite to wait staff and the like-- they're very impatient, and they blow every little thing out of the water. Makes it so I'm slightly uncomfortable going out with them, because I'm always wondering if there's some "extra ingredients" in my food!

  4. Anastasia-- My grandfather never tipped more than $1 his entire life (which was long). You should've been there when my grandparents and I went out to celebrate birthdays. Grampa spent well over $100 for food and drink, and we had the best wait staff I've ever experienced. You wouldn't believe the subterfuge I had to go through to add to that $1 bill! LOL

