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LIVING WITH YOUR KIDS IS MURDER by Mike Befeler

LIVING WITH YOUR KIDS IS MURDER

by Mike Befeler

Pub Date: April 15th, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59414-761-6
Publisher: Five Star/Gale Cengage

A memory-challenged senior drives the police crazy perpetrating what looks like a one-geezer crime spree.

Paul Jacobson (Retirement Homes Are Murder, 2007) is still on the plane from Hawaii when it begins. Waking from a nap, he shoves the guy in the next seat off his shoulder and discovers that Daniel Reynolds, sales rep for Colorado Mountain Retirement Properties, isn’t sleeping. He’s dead. Too bad Paul can’t remember a thing about the murder. His memory resets every time he falls asleep, so if he hadn’t found the note he left in his own shirt pocket, he wouldn’t even have known he was flying to Denver to move in with his son Denny and daughter-in-law Allison in Boulder. Denver’s Detective Hamilton lets him go after questioning, but Boulder’s Detective Lavino isn’t so lenient, especially after Paul finds the body of Randall Swathers—another Colorado Mountain rep—in the parking lot of the Centennial Community Center. Soon Paul’s a regular at the Boulder lockup. He’s hauled in on suspicion of bank robbery when he gives a store owner a bill marked from a dye pack, accused by fellow geezer Nate Fisher of cutting down his tree, even fingered for leaving behind dog poop while walking the family pooch. It gets so bad that Paul’s prepubescent granddaughter Jennifer volunteers to act as his lawyer, with payment in Hawaiian stuffed toys.

It’s hard to beat a team that includes a wisecracking old fart and a straight-talking young sprout, and Befeler’s second geezer-lit entry delivers.