LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — Picture it: Former Vice President Joe Biden is puttering around his Delaware manse one fine day when he is thrust into a murder mystery.
Along comes the man who will become his partner in solving the crime: the unflappable Barack Obama, former President of the United States of America.
Yes, this is fiction. But is it truly that unlikely?
Lexington writer Andrew Shaffer knows a thing or three about unlikely scenarios: In 2016, his novel "The Day of the Donald" was published at a time when the idea that the reality star and property magnate would become president was still considered a punch line.
"I've apologized for it many times over," Shaffer said.
Shaffer also hit the New York Times best-seller list for "How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters: Fight Back When Monsters and Mother Nature Attack."
And now there's "Hope Never Dies" an Obama Biden mystery which will get a second volume in the series next year, Shaffer said. The second volume will be set on Obama's home turf, in Chicago.
In "Hope Never Dies," Obama and Biden pursue the killer of a train conductor in Delaware. It's a fairly pedestrian mystery, but how many murder mystery plots do you remember? Even the Holmes canon doesn't seem hugely inventive in a modern world.
The beats of dialogue, the in-jokes (Obama at one point urging on a concussed Biden with his campaign slogan, "Yes, we can") and the quips that run as thick and fast as "The Thin Man," make the book an entertaining light read. There's also cover art that slyly has Obama striking a George Washington pose as Biden drive. Though the two aren't crossing the Delaware, they are crossing the state of Delaware.
A few samples:
— Biden barging into a biker gang's headquarters and trying to tell those there who he is. The former vice president. Their U.S. senator for 36 years. Nope, still doesn't ring a bell. Obama enters with a sawed-off shotgun, and the men are impressed: "He's the guy who killed Bin Laden."
— Biden and Obama spending the night in the sleaziest of motels to avoid Obama's Secret Service guard, whose digestion is felled by eating the leftovers from Biden's plate of loaded hash browns from a waffle restaurant. (Yes, you will want to go to Waffle House when reading this.)
— "I couldn't have looked more like Joe Biden than if I'd been playing myself in a Joe Biden biopic," says the novel's Joe Biden.
Shaffer originally thought of a series of Joe Biden mysteries, he said. But he needed a straight man for this mildly self-aware fantasy version of Biden, and who better than his former boss?
Some readers may snark that the book is fanfiction. Shaffer has no problem with calling it that. He did, however, throw out half of the book, including episodes in which Obama and Biden travel to Cuba and jump out of a helicopter.
"I don't think anyone remembers what Mel Gibson and Danny Glover were fighting against in 'Lethal Weapon,'" Shaffer said.
The book formally makes its debut on August 7.
Shaffer and his wife, the erotic writer Tiffany Reisz, author of "The Siren," live in downtown Lexington. He is originally from Iowa, she from Owensboro. They did a brief stint in Portland, but the couple likes the Lexington literary scene better for its intimacy, the Lexington economy better for being more manageable to two writers.
The two met via Twitter. Their first date was when Shaffer escorted Reisz to a Manhattan dominatrix; she wrote a column about the experience for the Huffington Post.
Here's an excerpt from "Hope Never Dies: An Obama Biden Mystery," by Andrew Shaffer. Amateur detectives Barack Obama and Joe Biden are spending the night in a sleazy motel while on the trail of a drug ring; Biden is the narrator:
"You ever think about running again?" I asked him.
"For president?"
"For anything," I said. "Senate."
"Michelle would kill me in my sleep."
"Be serious."
"I am," Barack said. "She said she'd smother me with a pillow. Even showed me which one she'd use."