Agnes Sharp and the Trip of a Lifetime (Miss Sharp Investigates)

“Expect to be baffled during much of the book, since this trip of a lifetime is being interpreted by Agnes, who’s rarely sure of what she’s witnessing.”

This second Miss Sharp Investigates murder mystery from Munich author Leonie Swann (deftly translated by Amy Bojang) takes the elderly lady investigator role that Agatha Christie made famous, and extends it well beyond English village life and death.

Readers of the first in the series, The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp, will recall that Agnes has developed an unusual way to finance her housing: sharing it, for a fee of course, with half a dozen others in the same age bracket, communally. Edwina brings animals in with her, especially Hettie the tortoise, and used to be in the Secret Service; Winston’s wheelchair mobility is five star; although Bernadette is blind (and snores), she’s got a colorful past to draw from; Marshall is almost tech savvy and is sweet on Agnes; and although Charlie’s past remains mysterious, she’s got style and a lot of cash. As for Lillith, she’s dead and in a tin. (Silent.)

So when the winter blues descend on their household of Sunset Hall, meaning blue fingers and toes from the broken boiler (and you know what it’s like to wait for repair folks now), and Edwina sneaks onto Marshall’s computer and wins a trip to a coastal hostel in Cornwall, the entire group opts to go along. After all, Edwina’s not safe on her own. Nor is Agnes, really, as she discovers and tries to ignore one village murder before leaving town, then arrives at the hostel feeling guilty enough to be certain that another apparent murder there on the coast is her responsibility to solve.

Swann leans heavily on the drawbacks of late life in this crew, swirling their personal and group confusions into distractions and accidents that play into the nefarious goings-on around them. Isn’t Helen, the elegant receptionist at the Eden, just too welcoming to be real? What on earth is a detox group and are the members safe to be around? Who may have taken a dive off the rocky cliff? And doesn’t it make complete sense to suspect the White Widow, whose husband’s earlier death is far too mysterious?

All those factors pale, however, when Edwina discovers and adopts an enormous snake on site named Oberon and her friends need to cope with its habits. As if that weren’t enough to handle, Edwina has also adopted and hidden a young man who seems quite desperate. Desperate enough to be a killer? At least one murder has clearly taken place—and when a storm suddenly isolates the resort, the plot returns to familiar Agatha Christie terrain. Who’s an ally, who’s dangerous, and how is Edwina communicating with the snake?

Expect to be baffled during much of the book, since this trip of a lifetime is being interpreted by Agnes, who’s rarely sure of what she’s witnessing. “Undoubtedly there were lots of innocent explanations for what had just happened, but right now Agnes couldn’t think of a single one. She had a heavy, paralysing feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if she had unknowingly swallowed a stone. Tortoises sometimes swallowed stones, and it was good for their digestion, but it had a disagreeable effect on Agnes.”

Best advice: Read as rapidly as you dare (without missing the clues, of course). Watch Agnes closely. As Edwina will be the first to tell you, Agnes’s only real hobby is investigating. “If she really got interested in something, it was mostly the boiler or a murder.” All will be sorted out. Maybe you should watch Bernadette, too—she’s got something in mind that she hasn’t let Agnes know about. If only elderly people didn’t keep so many old and dangerous secrets!