Consider the Alternative: An Anita Servi Mystery (Hardcover)

by Irene Marcuse (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Agatha nominee Marcuse's third Anita Servi mystery (after 2001's Guilty Mind) works better as a straight novel than as a whodunit. Servi, an unemployed social worker, lucks into a new job near her home on Manhattan's Upper West Side only to find on her first day of work that her boss has taken her own life, apparently inspired by the Hemlock Society's famous guide, Final Exit. This disturbing incident proves to be the first of many. The retired cop who serves as chief of security for the apartment complex where Servi now works alerts her to an alarming increase in the death rate among the elderly residents over the past year. Suggestively, several of the deceased committed suicide using the Hemlock Society's methods. The plot enables Marcuse to explore, albeit with less depth and emotion than one might expect given the author's own professional background in eldercare, the morality of assisted suicide and the conflict between personal ethical standards and the needs of a loved one. It comes as little surprise that the deaths merit further inquiry, and there are too few characters with plausible motives to make the identity of the criminal a real puzzler. The amateurish nature of Servi's sleuthing makes the unresolved ending plausible, but still not satisfying. Her relationships with her husband and almost legally adopted nine-year-old daughter are warmly and convincingly portrayed, but any mystery whose climax seems borrowed from an episode of Murder, She Wrote is bound to disappoint.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Anita Servi's social work position, serving the elderly for St. John the Divine, has disappeared. So she's eager to begin her new job at Neighbors Aiding Neighbors (NAN) in the subsidized housing of Monument Estates, just south of Harlem and full of the elderly. On her first day, however, she discovers the body of the woman who hired her, a suicide ostensibly because she was despondent over her inability to conceive a child. The method used was one outlined in a well-known guide to suicide that many of the elders served by NAN had read and studied. Similar suicides follow thick and fast, and Anita puzzles out their relationship to each other only slowly. The rich personalities of the elders here, as well as Anita's own family--her cabinetmaker spouse and their nine-year-old, Clea, still not quite adopted--match the rich New York ambience, from Mama Joy's Deli to the Vermont Christmas tree sellers who set up on Broadway each December. This one's a bit more ruminative than the previous titles in the series but no less absorbing and city focused. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 254 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company; First. edition (May 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802733778
• ISBN-13: 978-0802733771
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,008,384 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anita is my Kind of Gal, March 7, 2003

By	Margaret Sheehan (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

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?

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars solid amateur sleuth tale with a social message, June 8, 2002

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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

5.0 out of 5 stars A credible amatuer - at long last, July 28, 2005

By	Kathryn R. Sullivan (Passaic, NJ United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Consider The Alternative (Wwl Mystery, 464) (Mass Market Paperback)

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.