Laurien Berenson offers another warm and fuzzy cozy mystery in Peg and Rose Stir Up Trouble, the second novel in her comical Senior Sleuths series set in the Connecticut suburbs. Readers don't need to be familiar with the first book, Peg and Rose Solve a Murder, in which Berenson introduced tough and feisty Peg Turnbull and sweet-natured, eternally optimistic Rose Donovan. The once-estranged sisters-in-law, now senior citizens, are unlikely friends after years of not speaking to each other. Peg is a widowed poodle breeder and a "popular and highly esteemed dog show judge," while Rose, a former nun, now runs a woman's shelter with her husband, an ex-priest.
Peg responds with disdainful skepticism when Rose gives her sister-in-law's stagnant romantic life a push by signing her up for "Mature Mingle," a dating service. But then Peg meets and falls for "witty and urbane" Nolan Abercrombie, and things take a surprisingly glad turn--until Nolan dies in a hit-and-run accident. Grieving Peg attends his funeral with Rose, and the two notice that all the mourners are women around their same age. Why is that? Peg and Rose put their amateur sleuthing skills to work, piecing together clues into who Nolan really was. Might his death not have been an accident? And if it wasn't, who might've wanted him dead--and why? Clever and sharp twists and turns--tracked by two spunky retiree protagonists--will once again charm and delight cozy mystery lovers. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines