Esbeth’s latest cases revolve around a nursing home with an unusual number of convenient deaths, grifters who have bilked an old lady out of the $64,000 her family had saved so she could stay in stylish assisted living and the suicide of Vance Kilgore whose wife Adele insists was murdered. 

Agreeing to help her friend Boose try and recover his mother’s money, Esbeth realizes something not right is going on in the nursing home. While she is there, she teams up with retired forensic pathologist Gardner Burke who is in the nursing home feigning dementia . Through her investigation, Esbeth uncovers more con artists and swindlers than she can shake one of Boose’s rattlesnakes at. Trying to sort it all out keeps Esbeth and Gardner on their toes, but it might just land them both six feet under, toes pointed skyward.  

Sometimes funny, sometimes gritty, sometimes suspenseful, Goodbye, She Lied tries to be a lot of things but mostly falls short. Esbeth ends up investigating three (at least) different cases which are sort of connected and ends up dragging Gardner, Boose and Adele places they should not be.

Gardner’s introduction into Esbeth’s life may be just the thing she needs for a little focus during her retirement. Esbeth is fun, not afraid to speak her mind and has a strong sense of what is fair. An out of focus investigation going off in many directions makes it hard to appreciate its heroine and all of her charms.                          

--Jennifer Monahan Winberry