Getting Old Is Criminal (Gladdy Gold Series #3) »

After being widowed at a young age with three small children, Rita Lakin began an extensive writing career, which has included staff writing on television programs such as Peyton Place, Mod Squad, Dynasty, and Strong Medicine, as well as creating original series such as The Rookies. She has won an Edgar Allen Poe award for her screenwriting, as well as receiving several other award nominations, and her two original theatrical plays, No Language But a Cry and Saturday Night at Grossingers, are still being produced around the country.

Gladdy Gold had reached a golden moment. There she was, soaking in a hot tub with a man she adored, far from Fort Lauderdale and her nosy neighbors…until an urgent message sent her running home. Now her exotic vacation is a memory, Gladdy’s would-be beau, Jack, is furious, and not only are the girls of the Gladdy Gold Detective Agency all alive and well—they’re onto a hot new murder case.

Is a retirement-home Romeo to blame for the mysterious deaths in Florida’s most luxurious communities? Gladdy and her curious kibitzers will have to go undercover to find out—covering themselves with as many fancy-schmancy airs as possible. But with Gladdy’s drama queen sister Evvie playing the role of a Palm Beach flirt, their fun and games turn deadly. For by the time the girls ID their perp, Evvie is in the arms of a killer—and loving it.…

Publishers Weekly

Florida retiree Gladdy Gold; her sister, Evvie; and their outspoken friends at the Gladdy Gold Detective Agency return (after Getting Old Is the Best Revenge) to tackle a pair of puzzlers: the case of a peeping tom haunting their Fort Lauderdale retirement community, and the case of one Alvin Ferguson, who's hired them to prove that his elderly mother didn't die of natural causes, but was murdered at the hands of her suave lover. The latter investigation sends Gladdy and Evvie, in disguise, to take up temporary residence in the ritzy development that the alleged murdering paramour, Philip Smythe, has made his home. There's no sign that he profited from the death, but some sleuthing uncovers a suspicious pattern of similar entanglements and similarly "natural" deaths in his past. When Evvie begins to fall for Smythe, to her sister's dismay, she becomes convinced of his innocence even as she edges closer to danger. Beyond the skillful blend of Yiddish humor, affectionate characters and serious undercurrents note especially the way Lakin pulls off a tricky, funny-sad scene at a grief therapy session the simple story picks up speed and flavor with some twists worthy of Agatha Christie's archetypal dame detective, Miss Marple. (May)