This is such a fun, cozy romp. I really like this trend of good natured and open-minded “old” people. Online, you mostly encounter, at least in my experience, the opposite of these characters. Which is where the Okay Boomer thing has come from. But it’s important to remember that there are people of an advanced age who have maintained a social Justice ideology and are whip smart.

I’m of an age that completely missed Golden Girls and Murder She Wrote, and things like that. I don’t really have a touchstone or an inspirational figure for those that aren’t my own age growing up. Even my own grandparents are quite far away and I see them very infrequently. So, it was quite nice to sink into a genuinely heartwarming characterization of truly good people thrust into an ostensibly dark premise, which ends up being pretty humane. There’s a kind of darkness; death and murder is what it is. And not necessarily necessary. But it’s also a sort of fact of life in a way, for people of this age in the book. And that allows them to approach murder in a different way too. It’s still serious…but it isn’t an existential dread that crime novels sometimes cultivate or stoke in a person.

Here we have four people, literally in a club, with a healthy respect for one another but do distinguish between this activity and friendship. It’s just something they do. Each bringing something quite different to the table via their lived experiences. Each of their lenses is wonderfully vivid and realized and disparate.

It’s almost strange at first, as the stakes feel quite low in these circumstances, yet it’s quite a page turner because the voice of each and the rapidity of the chapter breaks bring a new point of view. It’s a thriller staple to sort of artificially bolster the pacing by such a method. But it works here quite well because it’s just so pleasant to be in these peoples’ heads. They’re lovely and kind, and relatable in often off-kilter ways.

There’s an almost meandering plot and they get there. Not to say that they stumble upon the solution at all. They work at it across a long time, actually; dogged in their pursuit of truth and Justice. Holding themselves to their own sense of right and wrong and the application of the law. The resolution of the mystery makes sense and is quite satisfying and, again, manages a great amount of humanity.

It’s hard to characterize it as anything other than “cozy” despite it being somewhat diminutive to the complexity of the plot and character work. It’s a sub genre that women gravitate towards more than men, but that more men should pick up, as it has much more healthy masculinity to look up to as well as a dollop of foul murder. I look forward to the next one, coming end of this coming month, quite a bit.