Being familiar with Cooney’s teen novels from the 1980s, 1990s, and into the 2000s, I was intrigued that she wrote a mystery for adults. Given the popularity of her teen mysteries, such as The Face on the Milk Carton series, all told 68 novels for middle schoolers and high schoolers, I found it interesting that she decided to turn her attention to an adult audience. As she is now in her seventies, I wonder if it makes more sense to turn her observational skills toward what is likely at hand, those of the older generation.

While the characters are elderly who inhabit Sun City, a community in South Carolina, this is no cozy mystery. Murder and drug dealing have made their way into this stress-free retiree development. Days spent playing pickleball, every sort of card game, from coffee klatschs to cocktail hours, this is like college dorm life, at a lower energy level, with poor short term memory, and frequent need for the bathroom. Cooney’s dry sense of humor makes her descriptions honest and funny without slapstick or mocking. While most residents have cars, the preferred mode of travel is either walking or golf carts, as most of your needs are within the community. Everyone is in everyone else’s business, watching each other’s habits, comings and goings, houses, activities, and visitors. Where you don’t know the facts, you surmise, fabricate, and spread the rumors. No one cares what you did for decades before you arrived here, be you diplomat, bank manager, teacher or housewife; your past is irrelevant. The past has a way of influencing the present, and not just for our protagonist.

We learn early on that Clementine (Clemmie) Lakefield is known as Helen Stephens to her friends and neighbors of Sun City, carries two cell phones, and has extended family who know her as Aunt Clemmie. What on earth can a retired Latin teacher be hiding from, requiring a double identity? Most residents give their house key to one particular friend, who checks in with them each day to make sure they haven’t fallen or died overnight. Helen texts with her next door neighbor Dom each morning, and has his key. When Dom fails to answer her texts, Helen uses the key to enter his home and look for him—failing to find him, and noticing his golf cart is gone, Helen goes on to notice a peculiar door linking Dom’s garage with the next neighbor’s garage, a feature no other home in the community has. When Helen enters the third home, she sees a beautiful glass sculpture on the coffee table, and snaps a photo of it, texting it to her grand niece and grand nephew. Bentley, her grand nephew, identifies it has a marijuana rig, finds the seller in Colorado, posting the photo on his blog. When the seller calls Bentley, he overshares information about his great aunt, putting the dealer on his aunt’s trail. At the same time, he shares an online article with Aunt Clemmie about a cold case in Connecticut (her home state), about the unsolved murder of a high school basketball coach from her hometown.

The story is now set in motion by these two significant developments in Clemmie’s life, as we learn through flashbacks the significance of the cold case and Clemmie/Helen’s identity, and Dom’s disappearance. Nothing is obvious with a master of mystery such as Cooney, and she keeps you guessing right up to the last few pages. All is very plausible, but not at all obvious. It is a satisfying set of mysteries, and supplies plenty of peaks of suspense and danger throughout. Clemmie is a smart, likeable, good woman, although her foibles and age do get her in some serious trouble. You’ll want to root for this character, and hope for a just, happy ending for her. I highly recommend this novel from Caroline Cooney, and hope she continues to spin these stories in her eighth decade.