Living with Your Kids Is Murder

February 16, 2009
In Befeler’s cleverly plotted if somewhat sleepy second cozy (after 2007’s Retirement Homes Are Murder
), 85-year-old crime magnet Paul Jacobson, who suffers from short-term memory loss, moves from Hawaii to Boulder, Colo., to live with his middle-aged son, his son’s wife and their 12-year-old daughter. On the plane, Paul sits next to a sales representative for Colorado Mountain Retirement Properties, who’s dead by flight’s end from what’s later determined to be a martial arts body blow delivered while most other passengers were asleep. Once in Boulder, Paul attends a CMRP presentation, where the speaker winds up dead with a broken neck. Suspecting CMRP is involved in fraud, Paul launches an investigation with the help of his aspiring sleuth granddaughter that grows to include other cases. Adding spice is Paul’s old girlfriend from Hawaii, who admires Paul of the “Geezer Enforcement Squad” for not letting age or disability get in the way of his living life to its fullest.