Death at Paradise Palms (The Retired Detectives Club Book 2)

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Retirement should never be this hard! As the group works together to solve the puzzles, they begin to open up to each other about their past lives and what brought them to this retirement community which they hoped would be so relaxing it would solve all their previous worries! But the group, through their questioning of suspects, has put themselves in danger. Can they solve these crimes before one of them becomes the next victim? Why does it seem the police continually seem to look the other way? Working off the books for FBI Special Agent Alex Monroe, Florida bounty-hunter Lori Anderson and her partner, JT, head to Chicago. Their mission: to entrap the head of the Cabressa crime family. The bait: a priceless chess set that Cabressa is determined to add to his collection. Death on the Beach, with a cast of mature characters and a fast-paced plot is a fun read. Stephanie Broadribb describes Florida retirement communities perfectly. After that last chapter, I can’t wait for the next in this series! 5 stars.

This book sees Lori and JT head to the city of Chicago to do a job for FBI Special Agent Monroe but, as always, things don’t go to plan. Here’s the blurb… Knowing what she knows now, Lori will do whatever she can to save him from this situation. She makes a deal to take a job off of the books from the last person she should be dealing with– Alex Monroe, faithful servant to the FBI. Flüssig geschrieben, viel Action, viele Dialoge, viel Witz, aber auch wie gesagt, einige ernstere Untertöne – der Mix hat mir sehr gut gefallen. Published earlier this month, this modern cosy mystery sees best mates and amateur sleuths Adam and Colin investigating the death of a homeless man. Although the police have written the man’s death off as an accident, Adam and Colin think foul play is involved. Undeterred by a warning from the cops to stay out of it, they leap into action and soon find themselves getting much closer to the killer than they’d ever imagined. This is a fun, jaunty-paced read with lots of clever classic and modern Christmas references. You can find out more HERE.Along with other crime fiction authors, she provides coaching for new crime writers via www.crimefictioncoach.com. First of all, I do have to say that I still love the premise of this story. The setting in a Florida retirement village, the four retired detectives/CSI deciding to investigate a murder after the local police doesn't seem to be doing their job... It sounds like the perfect recipe for a good story and it kind of has that The Thursday Murder Club vibe. The unofficial investigation let by our retired team is engaging and has enough twists to keep you entertained. It does make you wonder just how much detective Golding is screwing up/wanting to hide the truth though... Das ist jetzt für mich der zweite Fall, bei denen ich die „retired detectives“ begleite, und ich hatte mich hierauf schon sehr gefreut. Gleich vorab: Hat wieder Spaß gemacht, dabei zu sein!

I arrived a day early, on the Wednesday, as my panel was scheduled for 9.30am the next day. I’d been intending to travel by train, but 10 minutes before I was due to leave for the station I got an alert on my phone telling me that my train was cancelled (the rails were a casualty of the immensely hot weather the previous two days). So, instead, I jumped in the car and drove the four plus hours to Harrogate. Since this is the first of a series it suffers from this need to set the scene in book one. On the basis of this initial novel I would say another episode would be welcome and read with some anticipation. I really love them – what do you think? It looks like an open-and-shut case—until one of the Retired Detectives disappears… With our British friends, however, things have happened to push these problems from hanging over their heads to being front-and-center in their minds. Normally this would be good, they're working on the issues, dealing with the issues. However, when this club is the only one working on this kidnapping—the only outsiders aware of it—dealing with personal stuff becomes a distraction. Potentially a fatal one. We’re offered a simple missing person case at the start when a former Hollywood star, Olivia Hamilton Zeigler, hires the retired detectives to find her missing husband Cory. But when Oliva receives a ransom demand, the case turns into a kidnapping case. Still, the team stays on the case since Olivia doesn’t rust trust the police and refuses to involve the authorities. Broadribb’s writing and characterization are incredibly engaging and the reader feels as if they are as involved in the case as the cast.As a huge fan of Steph Broadribb’s Lori Anderson series, I was excited to see what direction she would go in with The Retired Detectives Club but admittedly also quite worried, as that book description reminded me just a little bit too much of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club. The comparisons between the two are rather inevitable and for me, personally, this one falls a tad short. So the search is on. Aided by camera surveillance and helpful neighbors, the team follows Cody’s movements while dealing with their own problems. Lizzie and Philip’s long term marriage has been wounded by personal betrayal and Moira’s past may be catching up with her. This deftly plotted novel, with a mature cast of characters, is another hit for Stephanie Broadribb. I’m waiting to discover more secrets from The Homestead in the next in this must read series! 5 stars. Moira is a retired DCI, who moved from London to Florida to start enjoying an early retirement in a rather luxurious and, supposedly, incredibly safe community. But The Homestead is not the paradise it promises to be in the brochures. As Moira discovers when one morning she comes across the body of a woman floating in a pool. The local police force doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to investigate so Moira and three other residents of The Homestead, also former law enforcement, take matters into their own hands.

This takes work on the Social Media, old-school media, and possibly even law enforcement fronts—there's no way that it's all coincidental, unintentional, or any other excusable motivation. So the questions that need to be answered are why is this being done, who profits, who is hurt by this, and what actions are being taken/pressures applied, to get these various and sundry groups to quash the information. My main criticism probably stems from the fact that I had not read the first two books in the series, but jumped straight to the third book. I normally like cozy crime, but here I missed some base for the story. It is mentioned several times that they don't have a PI license, so why does everyone talk to them? If my family member had been murdered, I wouldn't have spoken to anyone without credentials. Also, what evidence could they find that would stand up in court? I know that this is fiction, but I would have needed more justification for the investigation to seem realistic to me. If you're an avid reader of the series, you might disagree with my point though, I remember enjoying Death in the Sunshine, but I'd largely forgotten why. It was good to be reminded—this isn't your typical elderly amateur detective series—this is a grittier take on that trend, full of people who are only amateur now, it wasn't that long ago they were professionals, and they've still got the goods. My first task in 2022 will be to finish a polished first draft of Retired Detectives Book 2 and send it off to my editor by my deadline at the end of January. I’ll then be focusing on the editing of that book before starting the planning for the third instalment in the series. And I’m really looking forward to launching DEATH IN THE SUNSHINE in March.Unfortunately, I can't say that I was really impressed by the writing either. Somehow the story never managed to grab me completely, and the plot felt rather slow and repetitive in points. The constant mention of having to hide their secrets I previous mentioned didn't really help either... And if I have to read the word tabula rasa one more time, I think that I'm going to scream. The final twist did come as a surprise at least, because I never guessed who would be behind it all.

I was excited to receive this second book in the cozy mystery series about 4 ex-cops at a Florida retirement community as I had really enjoyed the first book. I loved the retirement paradise setting and the four mature main characters who were not ready to leave the world of crime behind them just yet. Their wisdom that comes with age rounded out their character and presented readers with a chance to smirk when younger detectives/policemen crossed their path. On Thursday I attended the opening of Creative Thursday, by festival chair and wonderful author, Denise Mina, and then it was time to get to work and onto the Creative Thursday Alumni panel with Mari Hannah, Lesley Thomson, and David Bishop. It was a lot of fun to be on a panel with these brilliant authors and the time flew past! It was lovely to meet the participants of Creative Thursday, and chat to them about their writing journeys during the coffee break, before they continued on to workshops with the fantastic Vaseem Khan, and Greg and Kate Mosse. Her other novels include the Lori Anderson bounty-hunter series and the Starke/Bell psychological police-procedural books (writing as Stephanie Marland). Her books have been shortlisted for the eDunnit eBook of the Year Award, the ITW Best First Novel Award, the Dead Good Reader Awards for Fearless Female Character and Most Exceptional Debut, and longlisted for the Guardian Not The Booker Prize. For some reason, Steph Broadribb decided to write 'Death In The Sunshine' in the third person present tense. I found this very distracting. I kept translating it in my head to third person past tense, which seems a more natural way of describing things. I've seen third person present tense used in short stories to increase a sense of immediacy and or intimacy but this story doesn't deliver either of those things. The story feels like it's being told at arm's length. Even though each chapter is told from the point of view of one of the main characters, you don't get inside their heads. It reads like a screenplay with added notes for the actors.

And Philip and Lizzie seem to have some skeletons in their past as well. Although Philip retired due to health issues, Lizzie seems to believe there is more to his story than he is telling her which breaks her heart that he feels he needs to keep secrets from her. Potential suspects and alibis aren't clear cut so a dangerous trap is set - putting one of the team members at risk in a dramatic reveal and takedown. Ich habe letztes Jahr mein erstes Buch von Ms Broadribb gelesen, und das habe ich als ziemlich cool in Erinnerung – die Autorin ist nicht nur als Queen of Crime bekannt, hat einige Preise eingeheimst, sondern sie hat auch selbst schon mal als Kopfgeldjägerin gearbeitet - sie weiss also, wovon sie schreibt, wenn sie Krimis schreibt 😉! I liked the premise of 'Death In The Sunshine'. I was hoping for an American twist on Richard Osman's 'The Thursday Murder Club'. In terms of the situation, there are a lot of similarities but the way the story is written is quite different. There is some exciting development in the mystery behind the Homestead's management team - and this piqued my curiosity. In the previous book, the Retired Detectives team had found out that, the management has been purposely hiding all negative news about the community. Moira and Philip decided to look into it. In this book, we have an investigative journalist from Boston wanting to dig deeper into the case. I am curious to learn how this particular development will be explored further.