Customer Reviews

Consider the Alternative: An Anita Servi Mystery

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I really loved this book! Anita Servi is a delight to hang out with: the way she thinks, her family, her neighborhood, her politics. It's a relief to have a strong, normal woman as the protagonist; a thriller that is neither full of gore and testosterone, nor cutesy sweetness, is a rare find. Tne story grabbed me and kept me up late reading in bed (alas, for too few nights - I wish these books were longer). The level of intelligence in the conflicts and the relationships is gratifying. This is a novel first, and a crime story second. Ms. Marcuse has me hooked; when is the fourth book coming?

When the Cathedral of St. John the Divine stopped funding senior services, Anita Servi was out of a job. With her husband, a carpenter, working only sporadically and a foster daughter to support she needs work immediately. Thanks to Susan, the wife of her husband's masseuse, Anita lands employment at Monument Estates, a upper middle class housing complex located on Manhattan's upper West Side.

Since half the residents who own their own apartments are senior citizens, Nan (Neighbors Assisting Neighbors) was formed. Anita is hired as a social worker but on her first day on the job, she find her boss Susan dead in her office, a suicide note on her desk and the book Final Exit near the body. She later finds out that three other residents committed suicide by using the recommendations found in Final Exit. As the death toll mounts, Anita begins to wonder if someone isn't giving the residents a little assistance to their voyage to the other side.

Irene Marcuse makes a case for legally assisted suicide without making any moral judgment. CONSIDER THE ALTERNATIVE is a solid amateur sleuth tale with a social message woven into the plot. The protagonist is a superb role model who readers will want to emulate because she adheres to her principles.

Harriet Klausner

Most amatuer sleuths make me cringe but not Anita. What a nice change it was to spend some time with a normal person faced with believable problems to solve. Basically a serial murder mystery set in a small community but nicely served up. And best of all no vulgarities. Imagine! A strong easy to follow narrative with no four letter words in a New York City setting with New York cops(one retired). Nice to know it can be done.

Anita Servi, the plucky NYC social worker is back. She takes a job working for an organization that serves the elderly and immediately starts falling over dead folks. The author does a fine job portraying old people and draws a believable potrait of the city but the book's message is a heavy lead weight.

There was way too much preaching about assisted suicide, and religion. Clea's character is a delight but it was extremely unrealistic, in a city like New York where everyone is obsessed with race that no-one has a problem with Anita and her husband Benno's adoption of her. This is going to be my last Anita Servi book. When I sit down to a mystery, I expect to be entertained, not lectured or bored. There is a lot of good in this author's writing but someone ought to tell her that in fiction it's more important to tell the story than to advance a social theory.

A favorite pasttime as a child was to sit down and read a Nancy Drew mystery cover to cover in a few hours. Read Irene
Marcuse's newest mystery that way. "Consider the Alternative" is her best effort -- intriguing, compelling and full of relationships that give you pause to think about your own life. The subject matter will make your reflect on "What if...?" and "How would I feel if a loved one...?" -- questions that linger long after the book ends. Irene has captured not just the Upper West Side but a magic of the intermingling of generations, ethnic and racial groups and occupations.

A desperately boring tale that is not a mystery. The only mystery is - why was it published? Perhaps the story would resonate with that narrow group of social workers that service older, dying people. Most normal readers will feel cheated.