This is a satire on the state of present day health care, and an indictment of our society's treatment of the elderly. Josie, Mabel and Mill, three elderly widows, are tired of living with street thugs and poverty. They devise the perfect plan to ensure their safety, and room, board, and medical care for life. The idea came to Josie as she listened to a speech by a U.S. Senator arguing that Social Security needed to be cut. In the same speech, the Senator argued for building more prisons. When she thinks about it, Josie decides that living the remainder of her life in prison isn't such a bad idea, and is able to convince her friends to join her: "Would it be so bad to live in prison? That's not the worst thing that can happen to me Mabel. At least I'd be safe and my financial problems would be over. And you said yourself, if we have to stay locked up in our homes to be safe, we may as well be in prison." Josie and her friends don't want to be a burden on society, however, so they decide to "compensate" the government for their own life-long care by ridding society of criminals who would otherwise end up in prison as a burden to the government anyway. In fact, they come to see themselves as "government agents" of a sort, with "a mission vital to our country...." They devise a complex formula for how many criminals equate to their life-time care, and set to work.

For the most part this is a light-hearted satire. The ladies kill some criminals, destroy a crack lab, break up some street gangs. When they think they've made their quota, they turn themselves in. There are a number of hilarious scenes as they try to convince the police to arrest them and a judge to convict them (they don't want to burden the government with the cost of a trial).

After this thoroughly enjoyable first half of the novel, the book turns into a polemic, and goes a bit over the top in preachiness. Hundreds, maybe thousands of seniors all over the country begin to emulate Josie, Mable and Mill. There's an epidemic of murders, and even the President becomes involved. Congress must act. The three women, now safely ensconced in a low security facility, are asked to intervene to calm things down. I think the author lost her way in turning the remainder of the book into a political tract. However, the first part was laugh-out loud funny (though somewhat bittersweet), and I recommend it for that.. ( )

This is a stop-gap review; I'll be back with more later. Suffice it to say for now that this is an "indie" novel with a difference: IT ACTUALLY SAYS SOMETHING, other than indulging in phantasies about zombies, or nattering on about modern twits tricked-out to be figures in other eras, or drooling over the primacy of our godawmighty nerve-endings. Retired widow-women are fed up to HERE with a society which has basically told them to go to Hell. They take action, facing all the consequences, but at-least doing things at-last on their own terms. ( )

This book is part caper, part mystery, and part political treatise on the justice system and our treatment of the elderly. I enjoyed the caper and mystery parts the most, but the book is well written throughout. Worth a read; would make a good movie. ( )