Granny's Got a Gun

Secret Agent Granny Series, Book 1

By: Harper Lin

Narrated by: Sara Morsey

Length: 2 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Barbara Gold, a retired CIA agent, is bored out of her skull in Cheerville, a small town in New England - until a man is poisoned during a book club meeting for seniors. Everyone thinks Lucien had a heart attack, but from his symptoms, Barbara knows someone has slipped poisoned into his cake or drink. Even though she is no longer undercover, Barbara feels as if she's only playing the part of a sweet grandmother, but this may just be her most useful cover yet.

The clock ticks as she investigates who in the Cheerville Active Readers' Society would want Lucien dead. It's only a matter of time before his death is declared murder and the police start hounding everyone.

Suddenly Barbara's CIA training is useful again, and Cheerville is starting to seem not so dull after all…

©2017 Harper Lin Books (P)2018 Harper Lin Books

My first cozy mystery and I liked it.

I found the narration soothing and the plot and clues easy to follow. I'm a very visual person, but I didn't have to difficult of a time keeping characters straight.

Entertaining

Good story line and great characters with enjoyable narration. Will try the next book soon.

As one granny to another, I ked it,!!

cool mystery! Old ladies are not yet dead--
some fight still in us old girls

Light hearted entertainment.

This book sounded fun when I read the synopsis so I ordered it. I'm glad I did. It was an easy listen and quite enjoyable. I want to be a granny like her. Strange though, it felt almost like a script for a TV show. Matter of facr, it could be a really great TV show in the likes of "Murder She Wrote." I'd watch it. Sometimes you just need to read something easy and pleasant, even if murder is involved. Enjoy!

Granny's got a Gun

cute story. narrator sounds like a little old lady! I found it enjoyable. thank you

Fun to read about a cool Grandma

I am now hooked on this series. I am 64 years young and enjoyed this tail of murder solved by this most unique character and the relationship our Grandma has with her grandson. I must read more.

okay, fun enough, but not great

Relatively fun short story, although the murder mystery part was a bit underwhelming, personally I prefer stories where the murderer is a bit more clever and more surprising, and the reason for the murder somewhat more convoluted. And it seemed to take forever for the main character to start thinking about a few things which seemed obvious to me, and yes, turned out to be important to the case, and let's add that I am usually not very good when it comes to noticing such things in a story... I like the reader though, and I like the idea of the old retiree CIA agent as the main character.

Parts which I didn't like all that much as they took me out of the story a bit when I started to wonder about them, first about her family relations, it seemed a bit odd that she seemed to have never told exactly where she, and his father, had worked to her son. Sure she probably would have been unable to tell exactly what his parents did, but not telling him at all, as it seemed, that they had been in the CIA, not even after they retired? I'd presume that organization has enough rather ordinary office drones not doing anything particularly sensitive too so that just knowing somebody worked there would not be much of a danger to anybody. And why not try to connect with her grandson by telling him that she owned a gun and then teaching him how to shoot since the grandson was already a teenager and very into games which involve a lot of that?

Also, the gun range visit scene jarred a bit as it seemed odd. I live in Europe but have visited the USA and have been taken to a range a few times when there, and from what I saw and was told I doubt somewhat you'd find any gun shop and range where you'd see only men, and have them act so surprised to see an older woman enter. She might be slightly mobbed by enthusiastic wannabe helpers, and after showing her skill, admirers wanting to talk shop with her, though. The shooters and gun enthusiasts culture seemed quite welcoming, and there seemed to be quite a lot of women, of all ages, in it. And, again from what I have been told, especially a professional would probably carry her gun in some sort of holster, not in her purse when going to face a situation where she assumed she might need that gun.

So yes, maybe the writer would have needed to do a bit more research, or else added some explanations to some scenes. Like that maybe her son was against guns, and that is why she and his father had kept quiet about their jobs and she didn't try to connect with the grandson that way, and maybe the area where she lived had a bit different gun culture than in some other parts of the country.

A Hoot

The same age as granny and X law enforcement. Nothing like the real thing that’s why I enjoyed it so much

A fun twist on a CIA adventure

In <strong>Granny's Got a Gun</strong> by Harper Lin, Barbara Gold is bored. After a lifetime career as an agent in the CIA, living in the small town of Cheerville, where she moved to be near her son and 13-year-old grandson, Barbara feels that life has become just plain dull. Then she attends her book club, which keeps reading books that Barbara thinks unexciting. But after they finish their book, lemonade, and lemon cake, the host, Lucien, goes to the kitchen and collapses, dead. Though not happy to see the nicest man in town die, Barbara gets excited at the prospect of getting to put her skills back to work, realizing that Lucien has died of poison and not a heart attack as everyone else seems to think.

<strong>Granny's Got a Gun</strong> is a really fun novella. I enjoyed seeing the adventures of Barbara as she tries to solve the crime, as well as her time trying to connect to her grandson by reading a book he especially enjoys. However, the book also features details about the challenges of life as a senior citizen, something Barbara finds difficulty in adjusting to. Not many mystery books feature senior women besides Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher. So this is a refreshing addition, especially since she has to accommodate her age in ways like putting on reading glasses to do her shooting practice.

Sara Morsey performs the audio edition of this novella. I enjoy her inflections and emotional content. Most of the time, she performs the first- person narration with a voice of a senior citizen, although sometimes I felt that she dropped that. However, Barbara is only 65, which is the bare minimum to be classified as a senior citizen, so other times I thought the tremor a bit too extensive. But in general I appreciated the performance of Morsey.

I was drawn to <strong>Granny's Got a Gun></strong> when I saw its listing on Audible as a new recording and found myself intrigued by the cover and title of the novella. I hope that Lin writes some full-length novels in this series and puts them on audio. If this only had more detail, I'd give it five stars, but with the lack of detail due to the shortness of the novella, I give it four stars.

enjoyable!

l loved the reader's deadpan style of reading I thought it matched the character's laissez-faire retired pace of life. I look forward to continuing the series.