Care Homes Are Murder

April 15, 2013
The lighthearted fifth Paul Jacobson mystery (after 2012’s Cruising in Your Eighties Is Murder) takes the crime-solving octogenarian and his family to Hawaii, his former home, for a vacation. Paul, who struggles with short-term memory loss, reacquaints himself with old friends Meyer and Henry, and once again finds dead bodies—the first floating in Honolulu harbor, another in the care home where Meyer and Henry live. The police remember Paul and his habit of stumbling over corpses. These days he keeps a journal that he reads every morning to remind him of the day before. But it can’t help him remember faces, and he relies on his granddaughter, Jennifer, to identify friends and enemies, including the drug dealers who go after him. This combination of travelogue and Keystone Kops humor, with a geezer joke or two thrown in, will appeal to most cozy fans.