AGNES SHARP AND THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME

The group of retirees collected by Agnes Sharp at Sunset Hall head for an even more dangerous destination.

When Edwina Singh wins a vacation to the Eden, a luxury eco-hotel in Cornwall, the housemate she chooses to accompany her is Lillith, whose ashes have been packed in a tin ever since her murder. Stung by this rejection, Agnes announces that Charlie, Winston, Bernadette, and Marshall will all book rooms at the Eden, even if they can only afford it if they double up. Bernadette’s snoring, it turns out, is the least of their problems. Agnes is one of four witnesses to what looks like a fatal plunge from a scenic, distant hill. Although no one reports finding a dead body, the glimpses of corpses—“The Yellow Hood,” “The Man Behind the Scenes,” “The Wet Woman”—keep piling up after a convenient storm cuts off the posh resort from the less civilized but more law-abiding world beyond. It’s not until “The Bookworm” is confirmed dead by the discovery of the victim’s actual remains that the quest begins to identify the rumored victims with the roster of guests and staffers at the Eden. The (eventually) high body count of utterly forgettable victims is leavened by the relentlessly facetious tone with which Swann presents both the Sunset Hall group’s characteristic foibles and the sporadic and often uncoordinated attempts Agnes and the others make at detection. Television fans may think of The White Lotus with an all-senior cast, a laugh track, and a shower of exclamation points inside and outside the dialogue.

The protagonist concludes, “If you thought about it, it really had been a very special holiday indeed.” Agreed.