"Shocking news reaches them--an old friend has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing. The gang's search leads them into the antiques business, where the tricks of the trade are as old as the objects themselves. As they encounter drug dealers, art forgers, and online fraudsters--as well as heartache close to home--Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim have no idea whom to trust. With the body count rising, the clock ticking...

The residents, staff, and neighbors of the Pine Haven retirement center (from twelve-year-old Abby to eighty-five-year-old Sadie) share some of life's most profound discoveries. What they eventually learn about themselves and one another will transform them all.

"In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club. There's Red Ron, the infamous former socialist firebrand, still causing trouble; gentle Joyce, widowed, pining for another resident, but surely not as innocent as she seems; Ibrahim, a former therapist who understands the darker side of human nature; and Elizabeth? Well, no one...

While visiting his grandparents' retirement community in Florida, ten-year-old Adam "Melonhead" Melon, accompanied by his best friend Sam, invents the Alligator Distractor.