Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody by Barbara Ross - mmpbk

Mass market paperback format. 

Jane Darrowfield is a year into her retirement, and she's already traveled and planted a garden. She's organized her photos, her recipes, and her spices. The statistics suggest she has at least a few more decades ahead of her, so she better find something to do . . .

JANE DARROWFIELD, PROFESSIONAL BUSYBODY

After Jane helps a friend with a sticky personal problem, word starts to spread around her bridge club--and then around all of West Cambridge, Massachusetts--that she's the go-to girl for situations that need discreet fixing. Soon she has her first paid assignment--the director of a 55-and-over condo community needs her to de-escalate hostilities among the residents. As Jane discovers after moving in for her undercover assignment, the mature set can be as immature as any high schoolers, and war is breaking out between cliques.

It seems she might make some progress--until one of the aging "popular kids" is bludgeoned to death with a golf club. And though the automatic sprinklers have washed away much of the evidence, Jane's on course to find out whodunit . . .

Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries. The first book in the series, Clammed Up was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel, the RT Book Reviews, Reviewer's Choice Best Book Award for Amateur Sleuth and was a finalist for the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. She is co-editor/co-publisher of Level Best Books, which produces anthologies of crime stories by New England authors. She writes at her home overlooking the harbor in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Readers can visit her website at MaineClambakeMysteries.com.