Respect Your Elders
The primary theme at work in this crime novel can be easily gleaned from its unusual setting and its driving conflict. The story is in an upscale retirement community. The conflict is between the official police investigation and the unofficial amateur private investigation being conducted by the residents. The cops are pretty much immediately certain—as cops tends to be generally—that a bunch of old retirees cannot possibly do something requiring cognitive abilities not marred by the effects of aging like solving murders. Ultimately, of course, everybody learns the lesson that we should respect our elders because youthful exuberance is not always better than accumulated experience and wisdom.
Start Saving for Retirement Right Now
An underlying theme that kind of stealthily works beneath the more pronounced themes at play is that every reader who is not already a senior citizen should start planning for their golden years the minute they put the novel down. Seriously, do this and do not procrastinate. This is an unusual murder mystery in that the setting is a retirement community and many of the major characters are in their twilight years, but it is more than worthy of notice that this is a very upscale retirement community populated by seniors who in their heyday had jobs like psychiatrist and intelligence agent. In other words, these are seniors living well in retirement because they can afford to live in a nice retirement community instead of merely existing in a nursing home. Do not be fooled: this portrait of retirement living is not the norm and is only available to those who had jobs that paid well enough to allow them to start saving early.
Trust No One
The actual whodunit plot of this novel is pretty complicated to the point that it seems highly unlikely most people will even come close to figuring it all out. Multiple victims and their killer(s) are presented as somewhat unsavory if not outright horrible. Some of the cops treat the elderly retirees pretty unsympathetically and there is even mistrust and distrust going on among the friendly members of the titular club hellbent on solving the string of murders taking place around them. The thematic lesson of the story is hard to argue with: trust no one. Or, of you absolutely must trust someone, have a backup plan just in case. This seems like a pretty harsh evaluation considering that the reader is asked to work very hard coming away with the message that teamwork solves crimes, but there it is. Oh, and never, ever forget: Scooby Doo and the gang were right. If a real estate developer is related in any way at all to a crime, chances are he’s at least partially guilty.
