In The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp, a smart, clever cozy mystery by Leonie Swann and translated from the German by Amy Bojang, a band of lovable geriatrics who share a house in the quiet English countryside find themselves swept up in an escalating murder investigation. The story is set at Sunset Hall, a dilapidated house in Duck End that belongs to Agnes Sharp, retired from the police force. Agnes now shares her domicile with five other eccentric pensioners--three women and two men. The housemates long to stay independent and live on their own while battling memory lapses, hearing and vision loss, as well as bad backs, hips, and more. However, when a resident is found dead in the garden shed and a gun goes missing, their world turns upside down. Before the seniors can retrieve what they believe is the murder weapon, another aged woman is slain nearby. Are the two deaths connected? This launches the housemates--and their pet tortoise--on a conniving, often madcap quest to find the killer while pitted against a host of obstacles, including their own limitations.
Swann's perceptive storytelling resides amidst the offbeat--as evidenced in Three Bags Full, her other cozy, in which a flock of ingenious sheep solves the murder of their shepherd. In The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp, Swann once again perfectly balances playfulness and poignancy. She exposes and celebrates the elderly and infirm--their predicaments and secrets--delivering a refreshingly fun crowd-pleaser, sure to charm mystery readers of all ages. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines