Caroline B. Cooney: The Grandmother Plot
This was a blast of a read, akin to the kind of great caper novels written in the past by Donald Westlake, and more recently by talented writers like Jeff Cohen and Catriona McPherson. This is a caper novel with a broken heart at the center. While Westlake stuck pretty strictly to the caper element, Cooney brings the reader in emotionally as well.
The story centers on sweet, stoner Freddy, who makes glass beads and pipes for a living, and who has ended up caring for his grandmother who has dementia. Freddy is a regular visitor to his grandmother’s memory care home and knows the staff and patients well. He slips in the back door of the facility and doesn’t sign in, doing this, like everything in his life, just off the grid.
