The Retirement Plan

Totally enjoyable with many twists and laugh out loud moments.

I was definitely needing something different and am so happy I picked this up. I enjoyed the story — three middle aged women sick of and disappointed in their husbands and their lives — decide to hire a hit man to get rid of the men so that they can head off on exciting adventures like their newly widowed friend Marlene. Things don’t go quite as expected. There’s drama, intrigue, and twists in the plot as the women discover exactly what they’ve set in motion.

I enjoyed the characters and the anticipation of what was coming next in the story. The author kept me guessing and the dialogue made me chuckle. Who says late middle age has to be dull and that your marriage show more is as bad as you think. It was just a fun read.

I was able to listen to the audio book while also following along in the e-book ARC, both provided by the publisher. The narrators, Kiiri Sandy and John Pirhalla, did a fantastic job voicing all the characters and bringing them to life. Their accents and dramatic flair really added to my enjoyment of the book as the production was very well done. show less

'The Retirement Plan' surprised me in the best possible way. I'd expected brittle, dark humour about women banding together to get the better of (and probably kill) their deadbeat husbands. I would have been OK with that. (which probablydoes not reflect well on my character) but what I got was much better.

'The Retirement Plan' was a clever, well-written, bizarrely uplifting comedy of errors. With most thrillers, each plot twist darkens the story, raises the tension and makes me like the people less as their secrets are revealed. In this story, every plot twist (and there were lots of them) made me smile. made me like the people more and encouraged me to hope that, against the odds, everything might work out in the end.

It was a story show more filled with believably flawed people who do bad things but who, given a choice, would rather be nice to people. It's a story about fractured marriages that challenge the love they were founded on. It's also a casino heist story with assassins, organised crime and clever fraud. Most of all, it's a story about people learning that what they most value isn't money but each other. What could be more uplifting than that?

What I loved most about this book was that Sue Hinceberg managed to keep the focus of this story on the people in it. Not just the women. Not even just the women and their husbands. But the barber/assassin who "does what needs to be done" and his PI wife who gets a job running casino security and the young Indian woman who is trying to run the casino (which her mother's company owns) while trying to mitigate the outcome of her mother's attempts to get her married off to a suitable man from Mumbai. The people in this novel felt real. A little exaggerated perhaps but people I could imagine meeting or working with. The diverse backgrounds and conflicting motivations of the people power the plot and create opportunities for the humour that lubricates the entire book.

I liked that the assassination, heist and fraud investigation aspects of the plot weren't soft-peddled or played purely for laughs. They did make me laugh but the tension and the surprises that make a good thriller were also there.

Finally, I liked that the main actors in the plot were in their sixties - hence the title of the book - but they weren't portrayed either as ancient and decrepit or unrealistically youthful. They were just people my age who thought that most of the crap in life was already behind them and were having to adjust to the new problems that fate had handed them. They got through those problems in part because they'd known one another for decades and knew themselves well enough to accept that they might have messed up.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this book was that it's a debut novel. I'd never have guessed that from the text.

If you're looking for a book that will keep you guessing and make you smile, put on your headphones and listen to 'The Retirement Plan'. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5TdIYzh7gw show less

I listened to the audio version of this and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I really don't care for the "this could have all been avoided if they actually talked to each other" trope, but there were just so many layers of misunderstandings, that it was ridiculous, but in a fun way.

What a quirky and hilarious debut! Totally relatable if you’re 60+ (or know someone who is).
It follows the retirement plans of four married couples who’ve been friends forever—plus a barber, his wife, and even a casino with a new boss. I laughed out loud as their plans took the most delightfully ridiculous turns and kept me guessing right till the end.
Clever, offbeat, and strangely uplifting — I loved it !

A humorous story of 4 couples and what they think happened vs. what really happened.
When Dave is found dead under his garage door, holding an ax, with a poker chip nearby, Hank is sure that the Indian mafia is after them. After all, Hank, Dave, and their friends, Larry and André, had developed a plan to steal $10 million from the casino using a glitch in the slot machines. This is to make up for losing their money in a bad investment scheme. But, after the wives discover that Dave's wife received a lot of insurance money after he died, the wives plan to kill their husbands. They are bored with their husbands and figure their lives would be better without them. They hire the local barber, Hector, to be a hit man. Hector takes the show more contract, but is also working with the husbands.
It is a comic look at marriage, conspiracy theories, mistaken problems and more. A fun ride. show less

The Retirement Plan is a funny cozy mystery. Three wives plot to kill their uncaring husbands for the insurance money. What they don't know is that their husbands have a retirement plan of their own. I feel that the first few chapters were slow while the author set up her plot. There were alot of characters introduced as well as the backstory on the two retirement plans. This plot is the most ingenious plot I ever heard. I knew the book would be entertaining so while it began slow I kept reading and soon was hooked.

The characters are hilarious. The three wives and the three husbands behaved ridiculously. None of them could successfully carry out a plan and they all bumbled their actions. The person in the middle of it all is the show more barber, Hector, who just happens to be an organized crime killer from Central America. The story was revealed through four alternating points of view. The wives had one viewpoint, the husbands had theirs, the new manager of the casino where the husbands worked, Padma, had hers and then we have Hector's. The novel switches points of view frequently. And while I enjoyed the antics of the husbands and wives tremendously, I think my favorite chapters were probably from the perspective of Padma, the frazzled casino boss of two of the husbands with an overbearing mother. Hector is also a cool character to follow.

Humor exudes throughout the story because of the zany plot. You can't help but chuckle at everyone's antics. The Retirement Plan is the type of yarn that all will enjoy. show less

Three women decide to kill their husbands for various reasons, but the would-be murder victims have their own secret plan. Things go awry. Best to take the whole novel as a farce and not think about it too much. If your thoughts linger, you might notice that the plot is a bit racist (The hired hit man is an immigrant from "the country with the highest murder rate in the world," El Salvador. Besides trafficking in stereotypes, it's inaccurate; El Salvador isn't even the murder capital of Central America.). I didn't particularly care which of the characters lived or died, but I was moderately interested in seeing if debut novelist Hincenbergs could tie all of the plot lines together at the end. The answer is a qualified yes, with the show more exception of a superfluous postscript. show less