Murder at the Male Revue is a fun romp of a mystery. The first murder takes place at the local fundraiser. But during the event several small catastrophes happen almost simultaneously - and while the comedy/disaster ensues in front of the stage, Camille Ledfelter is murdered backstage. But wait, Camille didn't have any enemies - or did she? As Joy, Francine and Charlotte try to make sense of the events -including the relationship of Camille's son to the Royal Buckingham Male Dance Revue, secrets will be revealed.
Will the bridge club need to recruit new members?
Will Joy get over her fear of unclothed men?
Why is a wanna-be stripper serenading the ladies?
Why don't you read this book and see for yourself?

The Golden Girls popped into my mind when I started reading this book for some reason. It ha a well written plot and the characters and mystery kept me entertained

Entertaining cozy with older characters which is a nice change to read. Solidly built friendships, three dimensional characters, and an interesting, if sometimes silly, plot line.

If you enjoy senior sleuths then you will want to read more in this series. Unfortunately, I did not read the previous books in this series and was not able to "get into" the story right away but it was still entertaining and I had a few laugh out loud moments.

This cosy-mystery outing sees a quartet of detecting grannies investigating the murder of one of their own during a fundraising male strip show. Just the premises was enough to get my attention, and although the use of an "older" character to investigate has been done many a time, this had a more modern twist. This was easy to read, there was enough drama with shady business dealings, past secrets, blackmail, and of course, murder, to keep the read occupied.

No I did not finish this book -I didn't like it and thought that them mystery was kindergarten-ish, the thoughts of the women a tad lewd and the fact that this is yet another story about a 'strong' woman thinking she can do better than the cops -been there, done that just one too many times.

I didn't find any humor in this book and this is just one of the reasons that I did not finish it. When a mystery is touted to be humorous and isn't - I just give up if there is nothing else to pull me in.

Catering a fund raiser for the community center is doing double duty for the Skinny-Dipping Grandmas as they can also check “Visit a strip club” off Joy’s bucket list. But when the auction for the men gets started, chaos insures and the town council’s president is murdered. Who could have done it?

As always, Francine is our guide to this third wacky and fun mystery. There are some good secrets, twists, and surprises that come out, although the ending did feel a bit abrupt. The characters are fun and strong. Between a couple of slapstick scenes and the dialogue, we get some great laughs along the way as well.

Murder at the Male Review: A Bucket List Mystery
By Elizabeth Perona
Midnight Ink
July 8, 2017

Review by Cynthia Chow

In their continuing quest to check off experiences on their Sixty List bucket lists, the Summer Ridge Bridge Club of Brownsburg, Indiana find themselves in the midst of a charity male revue show. This was as close as it was going to get to ticking off Joy McQueen’s #57 Go to a Male Strip Club, which was actually more a form of therapy for her post-divorce PTSD and fear of naked men. It’s not Joy but Mary Ruth who sets off a Rube Goldberg-esque disaster though, as the shock of seeing her grandson stripping has her dropping the cherry cobbler that leads to spilled roast beef, flaming napkins, and a power outage. Unfortunately, even those catastrophes don’t match the discovery of their Town Council President Camille Ledfelter, stabbed to death backstage. Camille’s nephew Eric Dehoney was the one the lead dancers of the Royal Buckingham Male Dance Revue, and his desperation spurs Francine McNamara’s protective maternal instincts into overdrive. Cranky Charlotte Reinhardt has her own reasons for wanting to investigate, namely her competitive spirit and need to best the local police.

It seems the Town Council’s first female president made her share of enemies, one of whom included Charlotte herself. Camille’s propensity for delivering own form of justice had her milking sources for monetary profit, which is not only morally questionable but likely to have gotten her killed. Going through Camille’s files and bank accounts has Francine and Charlotte uncovering more than one secret among the Town Council, not to mention some of their closest friends. It’s an investigative path that leads them to an aspiring but incompetent ant stripper, through the veteran community, and the very competitive and ruthless world of community bingo.

This in third the series focuses on the investigations by Francine, Joy and Charlotte, with Mary Ruth and Alice mostly out of town. Their antics are more than enough to keep readers entertained and detective Jud exasperated, as even though he doesn’t suspect them of murder he is more than certain that they will give him headaches. While Francine’s guilty conscience and instincts as a retired nurse compel her to help whenever possible, Charlotte won’t hesitate to break the law in order to solve the murder and beat the cops at their own game. The road to hell is definitely paved with good intentions, as the attempts to do good cause the cascade of tragedies and regret. Never has murder been so much fun though, as the pratfalls and antics of the Summer Ridge ladies rival any of those of the Three Stooges. Love ultimately wins out in the end though, be it for a senior citizen or a stripper.

The Summer Ridge Bridge Club is back in action in Murder at the Male Revue, the third book in the Bucket List Mystery series. The gals are all in their 70's and working on fulfilling all the things on their Sixty List -- a list of 60 things they all wrote out when in their 60's that they wanted to do before they die. As they work their way through their lists, they also manage to get embroiled in a murder mystery or two. :)

This time, the group is helping their friend Joy work through her fear of naked men. Ever since her husband left her for another man, Joy has had an extreme aversion to men in the buff. Now that she's dating again, she wants to get over her fear. So, the ladies volunteer to help with a local fundraiser. The entertainment is a troupe of male strippers.

Unfortunately, the night does not go as planned. Not only does most of the catered food end up spilled on the floor (accidents happen when a grandma shockingly sees her grandson gyrating on the stage half-naked being auctioned off as a date to the highest bidder), but a local town councilwoman is murdered backstage.

Who killed Camille Ledfelter? Can the girls discover the naked truth before the killer streaks away?

This book is cute and funny. I loved how the girls deal with life and their age, and how they all band together to sleuth their way through a mystery. The group is a mix of Golden Girls and Murder She Wrote with a little extra murder and mayhem added in for flavor. :)

This is the first book in the series that I have read. I had so much fun with this book that I'm definitely going to read the first two books! This group of feisty, fun-loving, kind-hearted ladies makes for a creatively different cozy series, a lot of laughs, and a darn good mystery!

I hope that I have half this much fun and adventure when I'm in my 70s! :)

I'm sure it would have been easier if I'd read the book before it but even with some background information in the book it still seemed to be missing something.

Mary Ruth's company is hired to cater a fundraiser featuring the Buckingham Male Revue -- male strippers. During the auction, the fundraiser's sponsor is found with a wicked-looking knife lodged in her ribcage. Mary Ruth, Francine and the rest of the Bridge Club ladies get involved in figuring out whodunnit.

I enjoyed the first two books in this series, but I was a bit disappointed with this installment. There were far too many characters to keep track of, and their possible motives made it even worse. The reveal at the end of the book read more like a Three Stooges skit than the conclusion of a murder investigation, and made me seriously question continuing with this series. Maybe I'll feel better about it by the time the next book comes out ... but maybe not.

This cozy didn't stick with me like the previous books in the series. Just didn't quite have the same humor and flair to it that the others had. But it did have multiple mysteries tied into one about who the killer was and how those pieces fit in. Once again our "elderly" ladies did solve the mystery and manage to cross off a few items on their bucket lists.

I was given an eARC by the publisher through NetGalley.

It was an interesting mystery. I feel as though I need more to get to know the chacracters however, and it made me a bit more intrigued. I would read another book by this author.

Murder at the Male Revue by cozy author Elizabeth Perona starts with an interesting concept for the protagonists - a group of septuagenarian bridge playing women who are members of the Summer Ridge Bridge Club. In Murder at the Male Revue, their reputations as crime solvers have already been established (Murder on the Bucket List, Murder Under the Covered Bridge) with the local law enforcement, as they've already helped solve a couple of murders. The mystery begins with a charity fundraiser headlined by the Buckingham Male Revue (who knew that a small town in Indiana would have a male strip group?!?), in which the president of the Brownsburg Town Council is brutally murdered. It's up to the ladies to solved the crime, which has roots in the past, before the murderer gets away with it. I laughed out loud several times at their antics, and really enjoyed solving the mystery along with the ladies. Murder at the Male Revue is the first book I've read by the father/daughter writing team of Elizabeth Perona, but it won't be the last - now I'm off to find the first two in the series! Highly recommend to all lovers of cozy mysteries. A+

The sleuth protagonists in the delightfully titled “Murder at the male Revue” are active senior citizens, all women. Such women are increasingly present in popular fiction, and a considerable presence in the real world, yet rarely well represented on television. Strong bonds of friendship and their active involvement in the social and emotional world of their small Indiana town make these characters feel real and appealing. The author realistically includes the women’s awareness of their changing physical condition; there are a series of careful, succinctly phrased observations of how one of them women walks and moves as she recovers from knee surgery. The mystery itself, a backstage murder that takes place before anyone strips down to a thong, is intriguing.

Unfortunately, early on in the story, ethnic stereotyping made a jarring, ugly entry into the story. The local mortician is of Greek heritage, and the author describes as ‘swarthy’ twice in the first third of this novel. The oldest woman in the group, whose unfiltered talk is consistently presented as comic relief, refers to him as a ‘Mafioso type’. None of the other characters really challenges her on it, of course.

No matter the length of a cozy mystery novel, characters in this particular genre are generally pleasant enough to make you want to spend a whole book with them. I’m a Black American woman and I usually enjoy this genre. If Mr. Papadopoulos is ‘swarthy’, I can just imagine what the fine folks of this fictional town call other people who don’t look just like them. I would avoid such people in real life.

Of course, I know that a certain suspension of disbelief is required by non-White readers of the classics, popular fiction, etc. For example, I love Jane Austen but have no illusions about being made welcome in her social milieu, were I a time traveler. However, when a reader/consumer experiences discrimination in real life, one becomes discerning about how to spend reading time and money -- not just for myself, but for others. We don’t mind a bit of escapism, too! Because of this, I have delayed finishing the novel; I will finish it because there are things to like about this book, and may post a longer review on Goodreads and LibraryThing.

This book was just "okay" to me but not great.
I don't post anything other than positive reviews so I will not publicly share.

This was a cute story. I'm not familiar with this author, however, I found the story to be interesting. A group of women work together to solve the mysterious death of one of their own, Laughter and hijinks will keep you reading. These ladies sure know how to have a good time!

When Mary Ruth’s company is hired to cater a fundraiser featuring the Buckingham Male Revue, the ladies see the chance to cross another item off their bucket list: helping divorcee Joy McQueen get over her decades-old fear of men in the buff. The fundraiser sponsor Camille Ledfelter is stabbed to death. Now the women must uncover the naked truth about who wanted her dead.

Proving who did it will mean dodging a persistent stripper-for-hire, surviving the American Legion Bingo, drinking high-end cognac, searching for an implicated 3-D printer, and laying bare the motives of a dangerous killer.

The plot was well executed and the story was interesting. I finished the book, which I would not have done if it had been all bad. It was a funny book. The mystery was eaiser to solve than others I have read. I have not read the rest of the series but I may just add them to my TBR pile.