Rita Lakin, Getting Old Is the Best Revenge

Getting Old Is the Best Revenge

Rita Lakin

Dell, April 2006, $6.99, 352 pp.

ISBN 0440242592

When seventy-five year old Gladdy Gold reported that she thought a murder took place, the police basically patted her on the head and then ignored her. She and her five friends not only proved a homicide occurred, they proceeded to find the killer (see GETTING OLD IS MURDER). Realizing that senior citizens are invisible to much of the population, Gladdy and her friends formed the Gladdy Gold Detective Agency.

In the Fort Lauderdale condo community where they all live, business is brisk, as they are hired to find a peeping tom flasher who showed his thingamajig to many of the condo's women. They are also hired by eighty something Angelina Siciliano to prove her eighty-five year old husband is cheating on her. They take the case and find out something that makes her client and her husband very happy. Listening to the news, Gladdy notices an heiress each week for the last three weeks have had heart attacks and died. She finds that very suspicious. On a Bingo and Bridge cruise Gladdy takes with her group, a wealthy woman is almost killed. Gladdy thinks this attempted murder is linked to the other deaths and with her friends sets out to prove it.

Readers who believe life slows down after seventy don't know Gladdy and her friends. They have more energy then many people in their forties, as they live life to the fullest; going places and working as detectives. This is a cleverly thought out mystery, and readers will not be able to figure out how the deaths and old murders are linked until the author chooses to reveal it. This senior citizen chick lit cozy is a funny yet exciting geriatric mystery.