Secret Lives - Mark De Castrique

Mystery

Rating: 7.5/10

Ethel is used to being underestimated.  At seventy-five years old, she looks like a loving grandma who bakes cookies.  But Ethel has never married or had children and she buys cookies premade, like God intended.  And simply put, she’s a badass!

Turns out Ethel runs a boardinghouse for government agents and when one ends up dead outside her front door, she designates herself the best person to solve the crime and uncover the murderer. She recruits Jesse, a distant relative and computer nerd working on his university degree, to her clandestine endeavor’s. 

I loved the shenanigans these two, along with several other law enforcement agents that quaked under Ethel’s scrutiny, got up to!

A lively read that I feel sure clued me into who Nancy Drew would have become in her elderly years! A sprightly and dogged meddler of the highest order!

Footnote: Another installment of books featuring protagonists that are over sixty years old, a welcome and frankly overdue trend.  Let’s hope that continues an upward trajectory in 2023.

Book Pairing(s): Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood, Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, Lying Game by Ruth Ware