What’s Going On at the Montcliff?

The Montcliff Apartments, a once elegant building is holding up fairly well despite the decline of its lakefront neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. It is clean, comfortable and the rent is reasonable, which is a fact of the utmost importance to its forty-five tenants, many of them retired or semi-retired and have called the Montcliff home for many years. The atmosphere turns ugly with the arrival of a new tenant, who is not only a drug dealer but also insulting and threatening to the other residents. When one of the tenants is murdered, the police conclude it's the result of a robbery gone bad. Her friends at the Montcliff disagree. Two of them, Nadine Felsenthal and Mona Malone, feel compelled to discover more, particularly after the incident appears as a brief newspaper account titled, "Elderly Woman Slain". "Elderly" as in So what? Don't bother? This is enough to start the over-sixty-five set actively investigating. With the help of sturdy, logical Edwin Denning, shy but resolute Violet Martacky, and the formidable Sylvia Witkowski the amateur sleuths exploit their sometimes unusual sources of information, mining gossip and overheard conversations, weaving the threads together. Along the way they are subject to incidents of very real danger; however, the untrained detectives persist, proving that underestimating them because of their age is unwise. "The author has wit, sass, and a take on life that make her writing irresistible." Rochelle Distelheim, author, Jerusalem as a Second Language.

Linda Stone lived and worked in Chicago for many years before moving to the northern suburb of Evanston. Her love for Chicago remains undiminished. Weary of ＂senior citizens＂ often portrayed as outlandish, or Miss Marplish, her characters are earlhy, manage on limited incomes, and, despite occasionally being treated dismissively, persist.