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Murder at the River Bend Retirement Resort by Stan Schatt

When a very disagreeable resident of the exclusive River Bend Retirement Resort is murdered, bestselling mystery writer Miriam Lipsky has to find the real killer to save her dear friend from prison. She finds the retirement home seethes with intrigue, passion, and jealousy. To make matters worse, it’s hard to distinguish what residents actually saw from what they imagined.

Miriam finds she has to search for the killer while juggling an autistic grandson, a divorced daughter with a tendency to choose the wrong man, her best friend’s overly friendly husband, and a stalker who who leaves her more and more threatening notes. To make matters worse, her rabbi who won’t take no for an answer when it comes to fixing her up.

Miriam, a widow after a disastrous marriage, has given up on love. Just when she is sure that part of her life is over, someone new appears from a very unexpected place.

Murder at the River Bend Retirement Resort is a cozy mystery with a sleuth who has to learn on the job. Despite her best intentions, Miriam makes mistake after mistake and yet moves ever closer to discovering a cold blooded killer who has no remorse.

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Author’s Bio

Stan Schatt has written forty books on a wide variety of topics including science fiction, mysteries, a chapter book for children, a YA novel, biographies of Michael Connelly and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and books on technology and career changing. His love for teaching is reflected in outstanding teaching awards he received from the University of Southern California and DeVry Institute of Technology.

Rather than having one career, Schatt has had several. He has worked as an autopsy assistant, an English professor, a software trainer, a law enforcement administrator, a market research executive, and a sales manager. He spent the last two decades as a technology analyst or ‘futurist” trying to figure out what future technologies will be successful.

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My Review

5 stars

Miriam Lipsky is a retired author that writes mystery stories with the main character Detective Romeo Winston. Miriam gets the call that a friend of hers in the retirement resort is being accused of murdering another resident. Well, she writes about murder, why not look into the murder herself? Miriam learns the hard way that writing about and taking part in an investigation are completely different. If this is not enough on her plate, Miriam also has a divorced daughter and autistic grandson at home to take care of too.

There is a lot wrapped up in this story. Miriam is relatively famous for her mysteries. She learns that her friend is being accused of a murder of someone in the same retirement home. Miriam decides to help her friend out when he doesn’t have any money to hire an investigator and gets a bit of an eye opener with operations and staff at the nursing home and when someone wants to silence her. There are a lot of suspects and a lot of information to go through to make sure she has the right person.

But as important has it is to find the real killer, Miriam has her hands full at home too. Her daughter is divorced and has bad taste in men. She also brings an autistic son to Miriam’s home. She also has her hands full with a friends over attentive husband and the town sheriff too.

This is a great story rich with details. The retirement home rang true for me since I worked in one for a very short time with I was a teenager. I loved how Miriam learned from all the mistakes she made in her investigations, it made her more real. This is a great story and I can’t wait to read more adventures with Miriam.

I received Murder at the River Bend Retirement Resort from the author for free. This has in no way influenced my opinion of this book.