Jane Darrowfield is a year into her retirement, and she’s already traveled and planted a garden. She’s organized her photos, her recipes, and her spices. The statistics suggest she has at least a few more decades ahead of her, so she better find something to do . . . JANE DARROWFIELD, PROFESSIONAL BUSYBODY After Jane helps a friend with a sticky personal problem, word starts to spread around her … word starts to spread around her bridge club—and then around all of West Cambridge, Massachusetts—that she’s the go-to girl for situations that need discreet fixing. Soon she has her first paid assignment—the director of a 55-and-over condo community needs her to de-escalate hostilities among the residents. As Jane discovers after moving in for her undercover assignment, the mature set can be as immature as any high schoolers, and war is breaking out between cliques.
It seems she might make some progress—until one of the aging “popular kids” is bludgeoned to death with a golf club. And though the automatic sprinklers have washed away much of the evidence, Jane’s on course to find out whodunit . . .
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Nice start to a new series. Good to read about a woman of a certain age, living a real life, and not a caricature. Jane retired a year ago and she’s done everything on her bucket list and now she’s bored, wondering if this is it for excitement in her life. Well, turns out that Jane has always liked to poke her into the business of others and help them, and she’s been pretty successful at it. So when an opportunity presents itself for her to do this as a real job, maybe a new career, she accepts the challenge.
Jane temporarily moves into a retirement community – undercover, or at least for a while – to try and figure what’s causing all the difficulties. It feels like going back to high school with the cliques, popular kids, jocks . . . or maybe middle school judging by some of the residents’ antics. But it turns out to be more than immature behavior and antics when someone is murdered.
Throw in some romance, family issues, danger, humor, and lots and lots of secrets and twists and turns and what you end up with is a very entertaining mystery with a full cast of characters and a good start to a fun, new series. Thanks to author Barbara Ross for providing an audiobook copy of Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody for my listening pleasure. All opinions are my own.