Ali Karim was a Board Member of Bouchercon [The World Crime & Mystery Convention] and co-chaired programming for Bouchercon Raleigh, North Carolina in 2015. He is Assistant Editor of Shots eZine, British correspondent for The Rap Sheet and writes and reviews for many US magazines & Ezines.
This latest work from Fracassi is a crime novel that heaps on the dread to produce a hugely entertaining thriller, one that mixes an Agatha Christie plot with a slasher movie pace, all striated with dark, dark humour.
At the centre is the elderly Rose DuBois [a former high-school teacher] who describes herself as a Black Jessica Fletcher [the amateur sleuth played by Angela Lansbury in TV’s ‘Murder She Wrote’] because of her love of detective fiction. Rose is spending her ‘golden years’ at the New York State Retirement Home that provides this unusual novel its title.
Rose Dubois feels that something is wrong when several of her fellow residents appear to be dying. This fact in-itself is not unusual considering that death is always lurking in a retirement home for the elderly. What is of concern is how they passed away. We have a resident appearing to have fallen badly in her room after her bath. Her dear friend [and fellow resident] appears to have committed suicide following the news. Another resident, the elderly conspiracy-theory-nut, Stan Swanson fell from a nearby telephone mast to his death – but what was the septuagenarian doing outside climbing the structure?
The residents start to panic, with the elderly Maureen Stapleton carrying a handgun to protect herself; the three eccentric Baxter sisters [who are alleged to be witches] attempt to summon a demon for protection – so Rose and her friends the former academic Mason-Miller and the retired film director Gopi Sharma decide to investigate. The Retirement Home Administrator, the former Londoner, Mr Blackwell reluctantly calls the Police, Detective Inspector Hastings for help.
Before Hastings or Rose DuBois can utter ‘the games afoot’, more bodies start gathering around them. There’s the mysterious fire in a nearby abandoned asylum, a masked figure is seen from the windows at night and several residents appear to becoming insane and violent.
Fracassi manages to delineate a vast array of colourful characters [with aplomb], but the cast start to thin-out as the body count continues to rise.
The motif of elderly sleuths investigating a series of murders in an isolated location may not appear to be anything new. It could be considered a narrative-trope of the British Golden Age, or even revitalised with the work of Richard Osman.
What makes this thriller special is the way it provokes thought in the reader. The machinations of age pervade the narrative, be it from the perspective of the characters, or be it from the author’s third-person eye as it offers insights into physical and mental decline that comes for us all.
It should be noted that Fracassi adds an interesting dimension in an afterward that intrigues the reader and adds context to the author’s motivations and intentions in penning this intriguing thriller.
Highly Recommended.
