Breakaway Books

Authored by Leonie Swann; Published 2024; Mystery

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

I feel like Agnes Sharp and her band of misfit senior citizens may be growing on me. I certainly enjoyed Agnes Sharp and the Trip of a Lifetime more than I expected to.

Agnes is getting a little concerned about the state of her small English town: The rate of murders is on the rise. Just when she discovers yet another victim within a few blocks of her home, her arrival back at the Sunset House is greeted not by her roommates clamoring for details but by the jovial news that flatmate Edwina has won a seaside vacation. Unwilling to let her venture off on her own, the whole crew takes off for the English coast hoping for some much needed relaxation at an eco-resort. But Agnes cannot truly escape, and bodies start dropping shortly after their arrival. Can she find the killer and clear her own name?

I still believe that the great strength of the Agnes Sharp novels is the hapless way that all of her companions turn into unreliable narrators, adding complexity to the mystery. They all have clues locked inside their own brains, and even they don’t know if they are real or not. In this novel, I was constantly questioning if the murders that each of them claimed to have witnessed actually occurred. To have to figure out not just who committed a murder but whether it occurred at all only added to the mystery. If that wasn’t enough, the eco-resort appears to be a hotbed of crime, with more than just murder taking up the Sunset gang’s time. In the end, I found the mystery to be satisfyingly intricate, with all the pieces fitting together in the end—even if I did guess the identity of the big bad pretty early on.

But a major part of this series is the comedy of the characters, which you either buy into or you don’t. I’m always right on the edge between finding the characters amusing and annoying: Why does Edwina have to love reptiles quite so much? Why is Agnes so infuriatingly stubborn to the point of being convinced that she and she alone is correct at virtually all times? I have generally been content to know somewhat little of the gang’s backstory, but learning more about the blind Bernadette in this novel added somewhat more dynamism than I expected. Marshall, of course, remains in love with Agnes, and for someone supposedly so astute, she remains in complete denial. The fact that this crew of senior citizens ends up as the primary suspects for the murders by the other guests at the hotel is laughable, in more than one way, and generally tips the balance from annoying to fully humorous.

If senior citizens are your company of choice, I know you will enjoy Agnes Sharp and the Trip of a Lifetime.