My friend Ginny told me that I need to start practicing gratitude. She thinks I dwell too much on past grievances, which is why I’m always depressed and angry. We’re the classic odd couple. She wants to rescue me from myself and I want to rescue her from a potential murderer.
So here goes…
First off, I’m grateful for Ginny. She may annoy me with her bright and shiny outlook, but she’s as loyal as they come. I’ve tried to scare her away with my bad attitude and tales of woe (two divorces, a daughter in and out of rehab, a grandson addicted to videogames and pornography) but she keeps reminding me how good I’ve got it. “You’re surrounded by family!” she says, like sharing my two-bedroom house with two failed adults is such a blessing.
Ginny lives in a fancy retirement home called Xanadu. Now that she’s a widow, she’s got lots of people to socialize with. She’s even got an online boyfriend she met on Senior Moments named Cristobal who’s lavishing her with gifts but refuses to meet her in person.
I’m grateful for my grandson, Jeremy, who lives in my basement. He’s the one who told me that Ginny’s boyfriend probably isn’t real and that she’s being groomed by a criminal. Jeremy might have inherited a little of my misanthropy, but he’s not wrong. There’s something weird about online relationships. I’m grateful these dating sites didn’t exist when I was looking for love. In my day, it was easier to see the scammers. Now they’re all hiding behind fake photos and emojis.
Normally, I’d shrug off Ginny’s phony relationship as just another folly of youth, but Ginny is eighty and should know better. I guess that’s another thing I’m grateful for: my ability to identify assholes. I should probably thank my father for teaching me about terrible men, but that seems like thanking a lion for eating you.
Thanks to this sixth sense, I’m able to see that there’s something more going on in Ginny’s retirement home than just a bunch of randy octogenarians flirting online. One of the residents there was just thrown off her tenth floor balcony. The police said it was an accident, but that’s only because they’re lazy and stupid (my father was a cop, so I know). We might be clumsier than young people, but we don’t find ways to trip over three-feet railings.
Now another Xanadu resident has gone missing and she was on Senior Moments too. Something’s going on and with Ginny’s help, I’m going to find out what, even if it kills me. There’s not a lot to be grateful for when you’re eighty years old, but our age gives us some advantages when it comes to crime fighting. No one expects us to kick ass.
POPPY MONTGOMERY GETS EVEN
Genre: Amateur Sleuth, Caper, Cozy Mystery
Release: June 2026
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org
Eighty-year-old Poppy Montgomery has always taken a negative view of her life. Her father? A bully. Her husbands? Losers. Her daughter and grandson? Well, they’re probably her fault. And now the police have taken away her license, her daughter wants to put her in a retirement home, and the bossy new fitter-than-thou attendee at water aerobics is taking over her favorite class.
But enough is enough, and when her new friend, Ginny, is scammed on a dating site for seniors, Poppy decides it’s time to finally get even. With the help of Jeremy, her tech-savvy grandson, Poppy launches a vindictive little caper, scamming the scammers that prey on the elderly online. But when two women at Ginny’s retirement home seemingly meet unnatural ends and her newest target is implicated in the murder, suddenly Poppy’s fun online con job becomes a matter of life or death. It’s going to take the whole gang—Poppy’s two new best friends, her in-recovery daughter, and her basement-dwelling grandson—to pull off one last job, before one of them becomes the next victim.
A charmingly cozy crime story brimming with laughs and heart, Poppy Montgomery Gets Even shows that it’s never too late to turn over a new leaf, make new friends, and scam an international crime ring while solving some murders along the way.
Meet the author
Gordon Jack has been a high school librarian for thirty years. In that time, he did his best to keep kids reading, including writing two young adult novels, The Boomerang Effect and Your Own Worst Enemy. Now that he’s about to retire, he figured he should write for people closer to his own age, which is why he’s suddenly interested in the lives of octogenarian crime fighters.