Customer Reviews

Getting Old Is the Best Revenge (Gladdy Gold)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have a problem when people start bashing light-hearted mysteries like they are serious critics for The New York Times. When you choose to read a mystery, you are looking for something light and enjoyable; an escape, perhaps. You know you are not reading serious literature. Rita Lakin's second entry in her Gladdy Gold series is even better than her first. The reviewer who bashed the book should be ashamed for insulting senior citizens as if they should all be decrepit and in wheel chairs. This is a funny, light mystery with an engaging plot and likeble characters. They are quite believable and show that seniors do still have functioning brains, interests, desires and needs. Gladdy is smart, charming, and realistic. The story is well-paced and makes the reader want to keep turning the pages. This is a highly recommended entry in a series that keeps getting better.

After their success in catching a serial killer ("Getting Old Is Murder"), 75 year old Gladdy Gold, her sister Evvie, and friends Ida, Bella, and Sophie open the Gladdy Gold Detective Agency. They have plenty of clients, including a woman who thinks her 85 year old husband is cheating on her, plus they'd like to catch the flasher that is targeting their retirement complex. But that's not enough work for Gladdy, when she reads about the deaths of several rich women, she wonders if they were murdered. Her boyfriend, ex-cop Jack Langford and his policeman son, Morrie, tell Gladdy she's imaging things. But murder seems to find Gladdy and when she and her friends take a bingo cruise they find themselves on board with a killer.

I liked "Getting Old Is the Best Revenge" even better than the first book in the series. The characters continue to develop and we learn more about how Gladdy's husband died and why she is so hesitant in her relationship with Jack. Having Gladdy open a detective agency is a great move as it will give author Rita Lakin a good plot device to have Gladdy get involved in more murder investigations. Lakin does stretch a bit with Gladdy and the girls ending up on the same cruise ship as a murderer and befriending the intended victim, but the cruise is so much fun that readers will forgive her. The murder is well plotted and readers will have a hard time figuring out who the murderer is. Readers who are easily offended should be aware that there is a sexual overtone throughout the book.

This is an excellent cozy mystery.

Gladdy Gold and Associates, Detective Agency, are at it again and enjoying every minute. Gladdy and her girls, as she calls her group, start this book with a case of trailing a wandering husband and one of looking for a flasher at their Florida community of retirees. Gladdy's sister, Evvie, writes movie reviews for their local community paper. Since they're private investigators now, the group always goes to mystery movies to help with their detection skills. It sometimes works.

When Gladdy is out for dinner with her boyfriend, a retired police detective, and his son, a current police detective, Gladdy links two recent deaths of older, wealthy Florida women, deaths which appear to be from natural causes. A few days later a third death occurs, but no one takes Gladdy's concerns seriously.

The girls win a ticket for a luxury bingo cruise. During the cruise all is resolved and Gladdy is vindicated.

Gladdy and her associates are a great group. I can't wait for the next installment scheduled for Spring, 2007, Getting Old is Criminal.

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.

Harriet Klausner

this one was as good as the first. Zany jewish seniors on the move! First they try to find out if a husband is cheating on his wife, then a Flasher is loose in the apartments!

How can they find out who is the flasher when all they saw was his Putz!

Then the girls are on a cruise and the mystery that they had wondered about in Florida follows them.

Funny and easy to relate to! I love it and want more about these "friends" in FL!

I have read the whole series of these books and they are hilarious. If only getting older could be so much fun and interesting.

The second "Gladdy Gold" book that I read. Gladdy and her girls show again that you're never too old to do things other than play bingo. Such as solve several murders. Keep up the good work ladies!

There aren't that many authors prepared to have elderly heroes so what Rita Lakin has achieved with this Getting Old series is fairly unique. If this is the first author you've discovered who does this you may also want to check out Richard T Dawn and his May List series which starts off with the book Death for Dessert. Dawn's characters are even more eccentric than Lakins are and he's a bit more willing to make fun of the negative stereotype through his great retirement home aged characters than Lakin is. Gerald Hammond's On the Warpath also has a great elderly heroine although it isn't as light a read.

Getting Old is the Best Revenge did take a little while to hit its pace with the jest of the novel only starting halfway through the book when Gladdy and the gang board the cruise ship. I did like the way it showed that the elderly can still outwit everyone but also was prepared to have fun with the stereotype of the generation through dialogue and actions of the characters (complaining about not being able to use lifts in fire drills, a group of old ladies about to start a fight with Gladdy and the girls because its our bench we have it every year in the bingo hall etc) which all made the story lighter and more humorous. Lakin also liked to constantly drop references to the very popular and successful author Carl Hiaasen, its very obvious that she does this but I am not sure why. Is she a huge fan of his or is she trying to put in people's minds that her books are similar to his, which too be honest with her, she has got some eccentric characters but nothing like his books do.

The basic plot of Getting Old is the Best Revenge is that Gladdy notices links between a few recent accidental deaths which of course no one else does. Herself and the other retirees of the Gladdy Gold Dective Mystery win tickets on The Heavenly, a Florida bingo and bridge cruise ship where they befriend a passenger who has yet to locate her fellow travelling companions. When they reach the first port and their new friend does not return to a prearranged meeting spot Gladdy leads the gang in stopping the ship from departing and searching for their new friend who they have a strong hunch has met with foul play.

There are also a few other authors other than the two I've already mentioned out there who fight the stereotype that old people are useless and also have their crafty old and very interesting characters save the day. Also check out Retirement Homes Are Murder by Mike Befeler and Epitaph by James Siegel.

Rita Lakin delivers again. This book is a fun little ditty that will definitely brighten up a winter weekend. I got a chuckle out of the reviewers who think people in their 70's might not have the energy to live Gladdy's life. Just like size 12 is the new size 6, many 70-year-olds live the lifestyle that used to be reserved for smart, engaged, 50-year-olds. Rita's books are a celebration of elders with real lives and the capacity to enjoy them, but the celebration is wrapped up in a funny little story to help us remember not to take ourselves too seriously. Gladdy and her confidants have the bumps and foibles of real people--and, dear reviewer-who-came-before-me, most real people do have petty moments. The people worth spending time with at any age also have moments of insight, wit, and kindness to each other. Mature friendships are about tolerance for the petty moments in recognition of the pleasure of trusted company, loyalty, and some fun together. Rita Lakin entertains wonderfully, with light-handed reminders about what matters. She writes so well, this book skips along and is a pleasure to read.