‘The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp’ by Leonie Swann

Published by Allison & Busby,
21 September 2023.
ISBN: 978-0-74903038-4 (HB)

The prologue is narrated by Hettie the tortoise, and I knew immediately that this was going to be a good read, and I was right.

Sunset  Hall is the home of Agnes Sharp, who had decided that she didn’t wish to live in a care home with rules and regulations, so turned her own home into a house-share for unruly geriatrics.

As our story opens a crisis meeting has been called to discuss what  is to be done about their late housemate, Lillith who has been shot and is lying dead in the garden shed. As Edwina, Marshall, Winston and Bernadette, ponder the problem, the doorbell rings.  It’s the police! cried Edwina.  ‘Much too soon’, gasps Agnes, 'we haven’t got a plan'.

However, the police have come to advise them that one of their neighbours Mildred Puck has been shot dead sitting in a deckchair on her own terrace. And have the housemate’s noticed anything unusual today. He tells them they must not panic but be vigilant.

It needs to be mentioned here that all the housemate’s being of an age have a variety of problems that afflict the elderly. With Agnes, it’s an intermittent high-pitched ringing in her head, and when it starts, she is unable to communicate until it stops.

Once the ringing and the policeman had left, Agnes marshalled her thoughts and announced the bad news and the good news to housemates. The bad news, someone is going around bumping off old people. The good news, we can pin Lillith’s death on him/her, thus solving out problem of what to do with Lillith’s body. And so, the group set out to investigate and find the killer, along with the help of Hettie the tortoise.

As the story progresses there are hints that some of the housemate’s have unusual, exciting pasts. And some have  secrets that they have yet to deal with.

It is impossible to do justice in a short review to this absolutely, utterly fascinating tale, that has both humour, and pathos as they deal with their advancing years. It is most highly recommended.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett

Leonie Swann is the nom de plume of a German crime writer. She was born in Germany in 1975. She studied philosophy, psychology and English literature in Munich, and now lives in Berlin.