Mrs. Plansky is the sun around whom the other members of her family orbit; they all know to come to her when something needs to be fixed, and Mrs. Plansky always does whatever it takes to make their lives easier. Not only is she the caretaker of her 98-year-old father, she also has to worry about her daughter and that woman’s parade of husbands, ex-husbands, and live-in boyfriends while trying to be there for her college-aged grandson whenever he needs her. But let’s face it, Mrs. Plansky is 70 years old now, and she could stand a break or two from all the action herself.
But that’s not going to happen because Mrs. Plansky is about to get a phone call in the middle of the night that will rock her world.
Still half asleep, Mrs. Plansky listens to a voice on the phone claiming to be her grandson Will. The boy on the line, whoever he really is, tells her that he’s in trouble with the law and desperately needs ten thousand dollars to get himself released from jail. Mrs. Plansky, always eager to help her grandson, follows “Will’s” instructions step-by-step – and the next morning she wakes up to learn that all of her bank accounts and investment accounts suddenly show the same balance: zero.
Mrs. Plansky does what any of us would do; she goes to the authorities for help. It doesn’t take long, however, for her to realize that the authorities are not likely ever to get her money back for her, and that’s really all she wants. Sure, she’d like to see the scammers brought to justice, but with so many people still depending on her, the lost money is the most important thing to her. So Mrs. Plansky does something that most 70-year-old people would never have the courage to do – she buys a ticket to Romania to confront the thieves face-to-face. She is determined to bring her money home with her.
Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge, despite its occasional violence, is a goodhearted feel-good novel, one in which readers can root for the good guys with full confidence that everything will work out in the end. Despite the plot being a tad predictable, the story is so good that I found myself turning pages just to see how the author was going to get the elderly woman out of the latest jam she had managed to wriggle herself into. Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge is lots of fun, a nice diversion from the more brutal brand of crime fiction, a novel I feel good about recommending to others.
(Thanks again to CLM and her Staircase Wit blog for turning me on to Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge.)
