Storymusing: I'm Not the Only Murderer in My Retirement Home by Fergus Craig

 

I’m Not the Only Murderer in My Retirement Home

by Fergus Craig

The theme for our club in June was “Antihero.” What exactly does that mean? Well, in broad strokes, it means a hero who lacks the usual heroic qualities of bravery and selflessness. I found the perfect antihero book for me, a murder mystery where the hero is (was?) a serial killer.

Now, Carol has largely left this hobby in the past, but she still doesn’t see killing people as really wrong. She’s done 35 years in prison and just been released to move into a very nice retirement home. (Which she has financed in a rather morally ambiguous way, we later find out, but so have some other people.)

Here at Sheldon Oaks, they don’t know Carol is a serial killer, at least at first. Well, the manager and owner do, but not the residents. Carol makes a few friends for the first time in her life – Catharine, Geoffrey, and Margaret. Oddly, a LOT of the people in this retirement home were in the police or public service in some way. Geoffrey was a police officer, Catharine was a forensic pathologist, and Margaret was actually Home Secretary, which in England means she was responsible for things like national security, policing, and immigration policy.

They all have a little baking club that meets on Tuesday and it’s quite fun.

Geoffrey realizes who Carol is, or rather what she did, and informs the others. Then someone is murdered, and everyone points the finger at Carol. She is enraged and wants to kill again, but she decides she likes having friends and lattes and the only way to get it back is to clear herself by solving the murder.

I really enjoyed the quirky humor in the motivations and reactions of the people – there’s revenge sex and romance. Carol has reasons why she murdered, though the truth is she enjoyed the killing aspect quite a lot. I even liked the ending, which is not what you might expect.

The setting of Sheldon Oaks is rather humorous in itself. It’s a luxury retirement home that has run well for decades but when Giles Temple inherited it, he got ideas. “A sauna, a pool, state-of-the-art DJ decks, a climbing wall.” There was even “a state-of-the-art sprung-floor martial arts studio.” Not really something people in their eighties are looking for in a retirement home. It’s just ripe for a murder mystery.

It’s a relatively short book that read very quickly, at 261 pages. I didn’t want to put it down. I highly recommend it and I would like to read more by this author.