Mrs. Loretta Plansky is a seventy-one-year-old widow who lives in a comfortable Florida condo. Her ninety-eight-year-old father is in an assisted-living facility where he often kicks up a fuss, necessitating frequent visits by his daughter to calm things down. Loretta handles her own financial affairs, plays tennis at a local club, and has two needy children whom she indulges a bit too much. One evening, the phone rings, and soon Loretta's life goes into a tailspin. Someone who claims to be Will, Mrs. Plansky's grandson, tells her that he has been arrested and needs money to get out of trouble. Can she please hand over her bank account information, including her password? She is a bit groggy from having been awakened, and she complies with the caller's request. Little does she know that she has fallen for a scam.

In "Mrs. Plansky's Revenge," by Spencer Quinn, we get to know the heroine intimately. She fondly remembers her late husband, Norm, and is grateful that their invention, a knife that toasts bread, made them millions. When she realizes that she has been cheated out of her hard-earned savings, she turns to the authorities to find the thieves and, if possible, recover her money. Unfortunately, the chances of restitution are slim, since these crooks are adept at evading the law.

This is an amusing and farcical novel in which Loretta improbably takes matters into her own hands. She flies to a town in Romania (ostensibly where the scam originated), intending to conduct her own investigation. From this point on, readers will need to suspend their disbelief big time. What are the odds that a septuagenarian could outwit a bunch of sadistic and violent thugs? Can Mrs. Plansky's tenacity, knowledge of human nature, and unthreatening appearance help her triumph over her greedy and heartless adversaries? In this diverting work of escapist fiction, we grow to care about the funny and spunky Loretta Plansky, who demonstrates that one should never assume that all little old ladies are docile and scatterbrained. ( )

Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge, Spencer Quinn, author
There are some books you wish would go on forever, because you fall in love with a character, and don’t want that relationship to end; this is one of them. I love Loretta Plansky. She has an indomitable spirit, with the courage of a warrior. When her naivete caught her in a monstrous scam that left her practically penniless, she literally took the challenge onto her own shoulders, even when The FBI told her there was little chance to recover her lost funds. She connived, encouraged herself to take risks and flew off to a foreign country that harbored the type of criminals conducting these scams that targeted and took advantage of lonely, elderly people.
This is how it happened. In the middle of the night, after a day of being hit up for money by both of her adult children, Nina and Jack, Mrs. Plansky is awakened by a call from her grandson Will, or was it her grandson? Well, it turns out it wasn’t, but nevertheless, he too hit her up for money and convinced her to turn over her password to her bank accounts. Then he stole her assets.
The next day, she was aghast when her banks called her to ask why she had emptied her accounts. She informed them that she had not, but she was guilty of turning over her password, and suddenly she was hoping this was just a glitch in the system. It was not. The FBI was called, and the cybercrime division took her case, but Agent Perryman gave her little hope. Loretta was retired, a widow living in a condo in Florida, paying for the care of her 98 years old father, Chandler Wills Banning, a demanding handful who was living in a costly facility she funded, agreeing to lend her adult children funds for prospective business ventures, and now, suddenly, she had no ready cash, no way to help them or her father or herself. She sells an heirloom for immediate ready cash. Then she brings her dad home, hires a caregiver, Lucrecia Santiago, and on a wing and a prayer, she flies to Romania where she gets lost and accidentally actually meets the culprits who scammed her that fateful night. Of course, none of them are aware of that connection. Dinu and Romeo like her and take her to the town, Alba Gemina, that she is seeking. By chance, it is also where Dinu’s uncle operates a hotel. His uncle, Dragomir Tiriac, is a dangerous gangster who engineered and operated the entire scam that Dinu and Romeo were using to filch her out of her money. He is a dangerous man. It takes Loretta a long time to realize this, but once she does, all bets are off. She gets angry. Because Loretta has tried to behave like a “spy”, or an operative, she takes risks and uses her phone to capture the information on documents and other evidence she decides might be important. She contacts people, makes clandestine arrangements and naively and bravely stumbles forward. Sometimes she has a plan, sometimes she has no plan, but still moves ahead discovering clues others have missed. She is in danger, but she seems to manage to thwart the threats. She witnesses other people who have been compromised by Dragomir in his criminal enterprise. She is a simple woman, and she is horrified by what she learns about the way their selfishness and greed rule over their lives. It is a place without traditional law and order. It is the country of the tyrannical Ceaușescu’s.
The confluence of coincidences requires the suspension of disbelief, at times, and yet, those times are also somehow believable with the author’s explanation of Loretta's experiences and behavior. She is a character, a true example of the sandwich generation, and a very lovable one. She defies the forces of evil because she muddles through each situation with a combination of luck and innocent happenstance. Relax and enjoy this book, because it exposes our very human flaws with an affectionate and witty hand. ( )

Mrs Loretta Plansky is a recent widow, living in Florida, playing tennis at the club, trying to deal with her ninety-eight-year-old father, and contemplating requests for money from her children and grandchildren. One night she’s awoken by a late-night phone call from her grandson. He’s been in an accident in Colorado and needs bail money. And, please don’t tell Mom & Dad! So, of course, Mrs Plansky gives him her bank account number and password. She even tells him he can take a bit more than he requested. But when morning dawns she discovers that not only her bank account, but her investment accounts have been completely drained of all funds. And law enforcement offers little to no hope of recovering her funds. Well, THIS will not do! If the law won’t help, Mrs Plansky will get her money back herself!

This was just delightful. Loretta is resilient, intrepid, tenacious, and so unassuming that no one can possibly consider her a threat. She has no patience for the bureaucrats, police officers, journalists, etc who not only will NOT help her, but look askance at her and dismiss her. This elderly lady is NOT to be messed with! And when push comes to shove, Loretta gives as good as she gets. The final chase scene had my heart in my throat, but she’s got moves I never expected. She may be in her seventies, but Loretta Plansky is one kick-a$$ heroine! Brava!

I still think Quinn’s Chet and Bernie series is superior, but this was really a fun lark of a novel. ( )

Spencer Quinn brings it again! Not your ordinary cozy mystery, Mrs. Plansky's Revenge mines the recent phenomenon of hackers posing as the in-dire-straights grandsons of older Americans in order to drain them of their savings accounts. Mrs. Plansky, who with her recently deceased husband invented the bestselling "toaster knife," is a fun and gutsy amateur detective. Believably vulnerable and equally believably resilient and clever, Mrs. Plansky vows to retrieve her stolen 2 million dollars, tracking her hackers to a town in Romania. There, Mrs Plansky discovers that not all hackers are created equal, especially her hackers, the sweet, desperate Dinu and his brilliant pal Romeo. Quinn does his usual great job of mixing humor with suspense, and pathos with realism. His writing is always top-notch! ( )

Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge dwells on the frightful trickery of senior citizens, especially women. The story disturbs me and I wonder how any individual may be so gullible. But cyber crime explodes in this current world of lonely senior citizens. I find that many of the events in the book do not follow common sense. How a 71-year-old woman handles all she accomplishes remains the bigger mystery of the story. The story ends with Mrs. Plansky as the winner, but surely the government will enter the picture now. The story ends too quickly with no explanation of the consequences. ( )