Hope Never Dies

Hope Never Dies by Andrew Shaffer, 301 pages

In this wonderfully refreshing mystery novel, former Vice President Joe Biden is chilling at home in Delaware eight months after leaving office, grousing to himself about Barack Obama's post-presidential celebrity-filled, globe-trotting adventures, when he learns that his favorite Amtrak conductor has died under mysterious circumstances. And who should be the one to deliver this news but 44 himself, appearing in Biden's yard in the dead of night with a Secret Service agent named Steve. From that moment on, Biden and Obama are on the case, dragging poor Steve through rough neighborhoods, into the den of a biker gang, and, of course, to the Amtrak station.

Oh, how I needed this book right now. This campy and cozy mystery is exactly the heroic story that's needed in today's messy political climate. (Just look at that cover! Isn't that enough to tell you how great it is?) Shaffer plays on the shoot-from-the-hip, everybody's-favorite-uncle persona of Biden and the lovingly-put-upon, smarter-than-your-average-bear persona of Obama that spawned a thousand memes. I hope that Shaffer writes more of these, and I hope that they gain enough readers that someone, somewhere convinces Joe Biden to do the audiobook.