That Cover! 5 stars

But seriously, I honestly can imagine Streetman behaving that way. Every time I see the cover I giggle just a little bit. Between his actual antics and Sophie’s love-to-hate-him relationship, it is safe to say the dog is the star of the show (and he probably knows it too)

How Sophie keeps her sanity with her mom, her mom’s friends, and that dog is beyond me. Any one of them is a natural disaster waiting to happen without the involvement of the rest, but together???

When a friend of Sophie’s mom is wrongly accused of murdering her probably philandering husband, the book club goes undercover into a dance group and a model train club with some hilarious results. Actual experience with either activity is apparently not required. These Arizona seniors are a force to be reckoned with and they take no prisoners. With operation Agatha in full swing, Sophie is dragged into helping them find proof of the woman’s innocence any way she can.

You can’t go wrong with a J.C. Eaton book. Fun, (sometimes frustratingly) quirky characters, and a great quest of a mystery with a satisfying unsuspected ending coupled with just enough of the ongoing drama that is the life that Sophie shares with her mom and her sleuthing friends keep readers coming back for more, page after page, book after book. Plus, you know, a tap-dancing dog… It is always an enjoyable reading experience.

⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
I received an advance review copy for free through Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours, and I am leaving this review voluntarily ( )

Sophie "Phee" Kimball lives near Phoenix, Arizona and works as a bookkeeper for Williams Investigations. She's also engaged to one of the PIs, Marshall Gregory. Her mother Harriet lives in Sun City West and spends her free time nagging Phee and imagining murders are taking place all over the city...or she could be right...

Phee is trying to sleep when she receives an early morning phone call from her mother Harriet. Harriet insists she come to the model train building, because her friend Cecilia has found a body. Although Phee thinks it's not true, she finds out she's wrong. It certainly turns out to be a body -- the body of Sun City West's railroad club president, Wilbur Maines.

But when Wilbur's widow Roxanne is looking to be the guilty party by the police, Phee's not so sure. Neither is her employer, Nate Williams, nor Marshall. So now Phee's wedding plans are on hold while they search for the killer. Unfortunately, Phee is getting dragged into another of her mother's hare-brained ideas, and she needs to go along with it, even if just to keep her mother and her friends out of trouble. But that's not going to happen. Not if Harriet has anything to say about it...or her Chiweenie, Streetman...

This is the eighth book in the series and I have read them all. I have also loved how each one has gotten better than the last. I have no idea how they do it, but the authors seem to have found a golden key to making each book better. This one is all about model trains. I remember my brother had a Lionel train, and we would play with it quite a bit. (He probably still has it somewhere). To this day, I love watching the trains at Christmas, so it's memories for me.

But the memories for Wilbur Maines ended when he died. However, it seems he left memories with plenty of women, and now Phee doesn't know if a man or woman killed the man. All she knows is that every time she seems to get closer to a killer, it doesn't pan out. And with her bosses running around catching other leads, she's on her own (unless you count her mother, friends, and her Aunt Ina).

This book has quite a few funny moments, one involving Ina, which I wouldn't have expected, and another involving Streetman, which I would. And I love how the stories reflect on different characters in each book; this one involving Cecilia, the poor thing; who just doesn't understand how modern society works. It's quite interesting.

The mystery itself is intriguing, with the clues few and far between; but each thread leads back to another, and when the murderer is finally caught it comes as a complete surprise, although I did have a clue as to the reason why, and I was close in that, at least. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hope that others will, too. Highly recommended. ( )

retirees, retirement-community, dog, law-enforcement, private-investigators, situational-humor, verbal-humor, family-dynamics, friendship, model-trains, clubs, Posse, laugh-riot, Arizona, murder, murder-investigation*****

The stuff about Phee's impending wedding is a side issue and will not affect anyone who starts with this book in the series. The constants are some real characters living in the retirement community (including Phee's mother and aunt) and the PI firm where Phee is the accountant and her intended is an investigator as well as partner. The plot centers around an aged Lothario who is found murdered at the model train exhibit he was working on and all of the likely suspects, including his wife (nobody but the cops think she did it). Great fun! Loved it!
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Kensington Books via NetGalley. ( )