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

Product Information

To keep things short, I have to say that I ended up being surprisingly underwhelmed by Death In The Sunshine. I expected a new favorite, but instead sadly ended up with a dud... Repetition and bland characters don't exactly call for enticing reading, and I don't think I will be continuing the series at this point.

Suitable for teen - adult, but adults would probably enjoy it more because of the ages of the characters. Well 2021 has been a strange kind of year hasn’t it?! As the end of the year approaches I like to reflect on what’s happened over the past twelve months and start to plan for the new year. Personally, I find Phillip quite annoying but I suspect that is intentional. Lizzie is smart and caring but how she puts up with Phillip I'll never know! After they solved a murder a few months earlier, the Retired Detectives Club has gained a certain amount of notoriety around the Homestead Retirement Community, so it's not terribly surprising that when a resident has some concerns they call them for help. Particularly when that resident has had bad experiences with the police previously. Can Moira and the gang find Cody before it’s too late? Or will this case see them lose in more ways than one?

Publication Order of Lori Anderson Books

The retired detectives are in fine form and there are a few laugh-out-loud moments interspersed among the more serious issues Broadribb touches deftly on, such as ageing, life after retirement, and relationships. Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the opportunity to read this cozy mystery prior to publication in exchange for an honest review. 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.

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. 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.

Did she jump—or was she pushed? The Retired Detectives have a theory. Now they just need the evidence… 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. Again, excellent plot development, and that this group of friends did a far better job than the police was believably portrayed. 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.

Also, Steph Broadribb's writing got in the way of her story some because of how she had British phraseology in play when the characters in a given situation were Americans. Sorry, love, you need to write everything in American English except for what the British characters are saying and/or thinking. (A descriptive sentence about a car by the kerb and several references to "hospital" instead of "the hospital" were particuarly irksome.) That's me saying this as a real Anglophile, too! Luxury retirement condos in Florida - a realtor falls off a penthouse balcony in advance of an open house. Or was she pushed? The writing is easy to read and like the chapters being a single persons narrative, at the beginning of the series I have found it difficult to get along with but now it’s what makes the series for me. 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. Anyway, the premise was great. The execution? Let's say not so much. Some of the characters were just flat-out unlikeable, a few were unbelievable and/or caricatures of a type, and there was _way_ too much angsty deep dark secret malarkey going on for my taste. Like, I literally started rolling my eyes any time any of those dead horses got beaten again after about a third of the way through the book.

The Retired Detectives Club Series in Order (3 Books)

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. Along with other crime fiction authors, she provides coaching for new crime writers via www.crimefictioncoach.com. Steph Broadribb is an English author of fiction. She first became a published author with the release of her first novel, which is titled Deep Down Dead.

An exclusive high-stakes poker game is arranged in the penthouse suite of one of the city’s tallest buildings, with Lori holding the cards in an agreed arrangement to hand over the pieces. But, as night falls and the game plays out, stakes rise and tempers flare.

Customer reviews

For me, this year has been an emotional rollercoaster. I’ve moved house – an interesting process during a time earlier in the year when we had more Covid-related restrictions in place – but well worth it. I’ve also, like so many people over the past eighteen months, experienced the sudden loss of a close family member. I don't generally care about the person or tense of a book's narrator as I'm pretty flexible, but this is told in 3rd person present tense, which is unusual, and it took a little getting used to.