What do readers think of Too Old for This?

Lottie Jones retired, but not from a usual job.

She retired from murdering people.

She decided she was done with murdering, but one day Plum, a podcaster, appeared at her door, asking questions about unsolved cases and she just couldn’t let her go.

Lottie came out of retirement that day.

Oh she is an evil old lady.

We follow Lottie as she worries if she will get caught or get away with murder again. I honestly think she didn’t care – she did it so many times.

She even thinks about how she will get rid of people who are annoying her in the store or anywhere she is.

TOO OLD FOR THIS is difficult to believe how she murders people and then gets rid of them, and you will be shaking your head at the things she thinks and does.

How does she get away with all these murders?

It isn’t as gruesome as it sounds, but Ms. Downing certainly knows how to write a good book. 5/5

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Samantha Downing pens deliciously mind-bending thrillers like her debut, My Lovely Wife, and He Started It. She followed those scintillating and perverse tales with For Your Own Good and A Twisted Love Story. With each successive release, Downing has demonstrated that she is a master at crafting tales replete with fully developed, fascinatingly diabolical characters, unimaginable plot turns, and shocking revelations. And left readers anxiously pondering what she will come up with next.

Finally, the wait is over. And Too Old for This was well worth it.

Downing wisely chose to tell the story of Lottie Jones – not her real name — through her first-person narrative. She is living a quiet, but full life that she finds satisfying. An anonymous life. And that’s just the way she wants it. At seventy-five years of age, she is content attending First Covenant Church regularly and socializing with her small tribe of gossipy, judgmental friends from whom she anticipates criticism of the dishes she brings to potlucks or bingo games. (“Homemade is preferred. Anything store-bought is frowned upon.”) The book is worth reading solely to savor their interactions. Not only are the supporting characters Downing has created thoroughly believable, their banter is often hilarious, providing context to the tale Lottie weaves and insight into her psyche. Lottie is very set in her ways and quite cantankerous. Her friends often try her patience. Downing recalls her own grandmother’s devotion to bingo and wanted her characters to “feel like real people and not be infantilized. . . . They are adults with seven decades of life behind them, so they are a little funny, self-deprecating, and they want a drink at bingo, . . . but that’s not allowed in church. . . . They realize they are being talked down to.” And they don’t appreciate it, but they return week after week.

As the book opens, Dottie’s life is upended by Plum Dixon, who has located her through “public records.” Plum is producing a documentary series about Lottie and the crimes she was accused of committing years ago – before the internet. Lottie was tried and convicted as a serial killer in the media and by the public, but she was never criminally convicted, nor did she serve time in prison. She had a particularly good lawyer. She was able to adopt a new identity, move from Washington to Oregon with her son, Archie (now a forty-six-year-old divorced father of two practicing law in California and on the verge of marrying his pregnant girlfriend who is half his age), and start over. But now Plum, with her inquisitiveness and eagerness to interview Lottie, threatens to disrupt the peaceful existence Lottie has long enjoyed. Worse, she insists that she will produce the series with or without Lottie’s cooperation because she is intent on exonerating Lottie “once and for all.” Lottie simply will not have her history splashed all over the internet. The thought of it infuriates and terrifies her.

So she is forced out of her decade-long retirement.

Lottie grew tired of killing, and “all the work involved. The cleanup, the body, the lull, the anxiety about when or if someone would show up at my door . . .” When she was younger, she only killed when three things were true. As with sex, she had to be in the mood. And there had to be an opportunity. “But the most important thing was the anger. I had to be very, very angry.”

Downing was inspired to write Too Told for This when she experienced health challenges that limited her mobility and she was forced to adapt to her changed circumstances. She created Lottie and “channeled all of that into her. She needs to change and adapt to so many things now. Not only her age and her condition, but also technology. The world has changed; science has changed. . . .I channeled all those frustrations into her and made them her frustrations instead.” Lottie has to take all of that into consideration as she devises ways to conceal her latest crimes. A few years ago, she took a free class at the library about modern technology, so she assumes that “every device is being tracked.” And people like Plum have a lot of devices that Lottie needs to account for. Plum also has people who become concerned if she doesn’t check in with them, respond to messages, or post on social media. And they come looking for her.

Lottie’s greatest fear is “being caught and exposed, and her family and friends finding out about her past,” according to Downing. But she doesn’t see any other available option if she wants to preserve the life she has cultivated for herself and retain her freedom. She is aggravated at having to consider the numerous technological, forensic, and scientific advances since her last killing. She’s highly intelligent and very clever, but covering up a crime often requires committing yet another crime . . . Yet as tiring as it all is, Lottie’s spirit is buoyed by how skilled she is at what she does. Killing “makes me feel invincible.”

“The key to writing a protagonist like this is to be in their mind, in their worldview,” Downing says. She has made Lottie extremely and credibly self-aware. She takes readers into Lottie’s “mind the whole time” because there is no other narrator, so no other perspective is presented. Lottie reveals her justifications for her behavior and, to her, her reasons are perfectly rational and logical. She details the various ways over the years in which she was mistreated, judged (“The only thing worse than being judged is being dismissed”), and why her responses were appropriate. She never second-guesses herself or wavers in her viewpoint. She compartmentalizes expertly. Killing is separate and apart from her ordinary, everyday life as a mother, grandmother, and good friend. And, ironically, it is those roles for which she wants to be remembered fondly.

Crafting a story like Too Old for This requires extraordinary storytelling talent. Downing deftly balances the horrific acts in which Lottie engages (and parts of the book are gruesomely graphic) with very dark humor which never goes so far that it becomes off-putting or transforms Lottie into a mere caricature of a serial killer. She also keeps the pace of the tale moving briskly with no lulls as Lottie scrambles to evade detection of either her past or her recent crimes. And she injects shocking twists and revelations at expertly timed intervals that make it nearly impossible to stop reading.

Perhaps most surprisingly, Downing manages to make Lottie sympathetic and relatable. Readers, especially those enjoying retirement, will identify with Lottie’s reluctance to disrupt the routines she is accustomed to and return to her time-consuming, exhausting avocation, no matter how satisfying she found it years ago and does again. Downing also describes Lottie’s search for a retirement community to move to because she is all-too aware that she is physically slowing down, tires easily, and definitely does not want to be dependent on anyone else, especially Archie. (It’s much harder for her to move dead bodies now and she has to devise new methods to get that done. And her memory isn’t as good as it used to be so she worries that she will forget about or overlook evidence that could lead to her capture.) She is concerned about whether she can afford to live in her preferred senior living facility, an issue many senior Americans grapple with. Older female readers will relate to Lottie’s fury about not being seen. Downing says she did not realize when she began writing the book that Lottie, “like so many elderly women, had become invisible.” Who would suspect that an unobtrusive elderly lady playing bingo in the church social hall just savagely murdered a young woman and disposed of her body in a most callous and nightmare-inducing manner?

Too Old for This is engrossing, frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and outrageously entertaining. Downing again demonstrates her unique ability to create twisty thrillers populated with pathologically twisted protagonists and supporting characters who bring dimension and depth to the story. Downing tells her creative story in an inventive, absorbing way. In any other author’s hands, Too Old for This could have been just a ho-hum mystery or campy crime fiction. But Downing’s skillful construction of Lottie’s narrative and restraint make it one of 2025’s best thrillers.

I love mysteries that have older main characters. And I adore snarky humor. Put the two together with a smart, well thought out plot and you have a five star book. Lottie got away with murder, well multiple murders, when she was younger. At age 75 she was in blissful “retirement”. Until a woman showed up uninvited at her door one night wanting to film a docuseries about her. She did not change her name and move just to have her history brought back up into the open. So… Downing does a great job of differentiating between murder then and now. Smart phones, for one. And hauling and cutting bodies at 75 is different from your 30s and 40s.

I am not a big fan of psychological thrillers, especially those about serial killers. And it takes a special kind of talent to create a basically evil character that I’m still rooting for. But Downing has done it. I wasn’t sure how I wanted this to end. Did I want her to pull it off? Did I feel she needed to be punished? I thought the ending was perfect. This was fun entertainment in a dark, twisted way. And you’ll learn plenty about the best way to clean up a murder scene.

My thanks to Netgalley and Berkley Publishing for an advance copy of this book.

Joseph Heller said that he wanted readers to laugh at Catch-22 and then to be appalled at what they were actually laughing about. This book made me feel the same way. How else can one explain rooting for a cold-blooded murderess? Lottie is equal parts cunning killer and typical grandma who occasionally struggles with evolving technology. Other than the gruesome killings (which is in itself ironic to say), she comes across as someone who really does fit in at church groups and bingo while also juggling the dynamics of a son in the process of remarrying a younger woman who is desperate for her approval.

When Lottie’s “colorful” past is in danger of catching up to her, she is almost forced to return to what she seems to do best — eliminate problems. What makes it even more entertaining is watching her have to account for those technological advances that both make it easier for her to track people but also so difficult to avoid being tracked herself.

Brilliantly conceived by Downing, this combination of traits provided ample opportunity for plot twists that caught me completely off guard. It also provided a stark reminder that it may be impossible to ever outrun the past. If dark humor is your thing, Downing’s latest book is a great read!

Lottie Jones is not your typical retiree. She plays bingo, prepares stuffed chicken roll for the church potluck, and critiques bridal gowns over text. She’s also a former serial killer. These days, her biggest concern should be choosing a retirement home—but unfortunately, her past isn’t finished with her yet.

Told in Lottie’s sharp, first-person voice, this novel is a darkly funny meditation on aging, guilt, and reinvention. The humor is biting—after one early killing, she wakes up with “a bit of regret,” noting, “I don’t use that term lightly, because regret is one of the most insidious things out there. Arthritis is a close second.”

Surrounding Lottie is a wonderfully nosy supporting cast: Glenda, who judges her for bringing store-bought spinach dip to bingo night; Bonnie, who spikes the punch from her flask; Sheila, who teaches her to cook; and her son Archie, whose upcoming wedding to a much younger woman with questionable fashion sense gives Lottie plenty of material for commentary.

Woven between church drama and family dysfunction is a thread of quiet menace—Lottie is still tying up loose ends, and people are still dying. The less said about that, the better.

This genre-bending book defies easy classification. Part mystery, part black comedy, part character study, it also reads like a coming-of-age novel—just one centered on someone in her seventies. Lottie isn’t discovering who she is for the first time; she’s deciding what she can live with, and what (or who) she needs to erase to get there.

Whether you’re here for the blood or the bingo, this story delivers both—with a wry smile and a body count.