Hope Never Dies: An Obama Biden Mystery

by Andrew Shaffer

Overview

The New York Times Best Seller

"[Hope Never Dies is] an escapist fantasy that will likely appeal to liberals pining for the previous administration, longing for the Obama-Biden team to emerge from political retirement as action heroes."—Alexandra Alter, New York Times

Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama team up in this high-stakes thriller that combines a mystery worthy of Watson and Holmes with the laugh-out-loud bromantic chemistry of Lethal Weapon’s Murtaugh and Riggs.
 
Vice President Joe Biden is fresh out of the Obama White House and feeling adrift when his favorite railroad conductor dies in a suspicious accident, leaving behind an ailing wife and a trail of clues. To unravel the mystery, “Amtrak Joe” re-teams with the only man he’s ever fully trusted: the 44th president of the United States. Together they’ll plumb the darkest corners of Delaware, traveling from cheap motels to biker bars and beyond, as they uncover the sinister forces advancing America’s opioid epidemic.

Part noir thriller and part bromance, Hope Never Dies is essentially the first published work of Obama/Biden fiction—and a cathartic read for anyone distressed by the current state of affairs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683690399
Publisher:	Quirk Publishing
Publication date:	07/10/2018
Series:	Obama Biden Mystery Series , #1
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	110,283
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Andrew Shaffer is the New York Times best-selling author of Quirk’s Obama/Biden Mystery series, the satirical thriller The Day of the Donald: Trump Trumps America, and the Goodreads Choice semifinalist Fifty Shames of Earl Grey: A Parody, among other humorous fiction and nonfiction books for HarperCollins and Penguin Random House. He lives in Kentucky with his wife, the author Tiffany Reisz.

Read an Excerpt

The night this all started, I was in a black Irish mood.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Hope Never Dies"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Andrew Shaffer.
Excerpted by permission of Quirk Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

05/21/2018
The careers of Barack Obama and Joe Biden take an unusual turn after they leave the White House in this entertaining, offbeat whodunit from Shaffer (Fifty Shames of Earl Grey). Fuming at his Delaware lake house, Joe hasn’t heard in months from his BFF, Barack, who has been busy hanging out with celebrities such as actor Bradley Cooper. One night, Barack and a Secret Service agent show up to share some sad news—the death of Finn Donnelly, an Amtrak conductor Joe was friends with, who was struck by an Acela Express that morning. The presence of a map of the Biden home in Finn’s work desk led the Wilmington PD to suspect that he may have been stalking Joe, so they reached out to the Secret Service. Joe is further unsettled when a friend on the force, rumored to have been the inspiration for Dirty Harry, reveals that a bag of heroin was found on the body. Unwilling to believe that family man Finn was a junkie, Joe sets out to investigate what becomes a murder case, eventually aided by the hyper-cerebral Barack. Fans of Carl Hiaasen’s comic crime novels will have fun. Agent: Brandy Bowles, United Talent Agency. (July)

Publishers Weekly

An Official Summer Read of Publishers Weekly and The Interrobang 
A 2018 Goodreads Choice Award Finalist

“[Hope Never Dies is] a roughly 300-page work of political fanfiction, an escapist fantasy that will likely appeal to liberals pining for the previous administration, longing for the Obama-Biden team to emerge from political retirement as action heroes. But it’s also at times a surprisingly earnest story about estranged friends who are reunited under strange circumstances.”—Alexandra Alter, New York Times

“It’s a giddy premise, a bit of Resistance wish-fulfillment for those who’d like to see Biden and Obama trading one-liners and cracking skulls.”—New Yorker

“While readers are sure to get a kick out of the codenames and inside jokes used playfully throughout, Hope Never Dies is an intriguing saga that doesn’t sacrifice momentum for winks and nods.”—Entertainment Weekly
 
“It’s easy to imagine that if these fist-bumping brothers were ever to become a modern Sherlock and Watson, the world might be a better, more interesting place.”—USA Today, ★★★ out of four 
 
“Obama and Biden are the ultimate crime-fighting team in Hope Never Dies.”—Washington Post
 
“An ambitious and completely successful novel.”—Booklist
 
“Deeply weird and very funny.”—The Wall Street Journal
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“Step aside Holmes and Watson; back off Poirot and Hastings. A new pair of amateur sleuths are hitting town this month: Barack Obama and Joe Biden.”—The Guardian (UK) 
 
“Shaffer has sublimated liberal grief, nostalgia, and fantasy into a sort of allegorical potboiler.”—Slate

“A novel nostalgic for a feel-good moment in US politics—one that now seems far in the past.”—Quartz 
 
“Hope Never Dies is the lighthearted antidote for our tense political times, the escapist summer book we all need. Once you read it, you’ll want more.”—Brooklyn Rail
 
“[Hope Never Dies] is a  fun lark, and the world could use more of that these days.”—Florida Times-Union
 
“Hope Never Dies has humor and heart as well as plenty of adventure [and] surprisingly nuanced and tender takes on aging, masculinity, jealousy, and life after eight years in power.”—Santa Fe New Mexican
 
“[An] entertaining, offbeat whodunit...Fans of Carl Hiaasen’s comic crime novels will have fun.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“The cool, cerebral ex-POTUS is a reasonable stand-in for Sherlock Holmes, and his ex-VPOTUS, by turns appealingly modest and laughably self-satisfied, is in some ways a better Watson than the good doctor himself.”—Kirkus
 
“The beats of dialogue, the in-jokes, and the quips...make the book an entertaining light read.”—Lexington Herald-Leader
 
“Probably the most unlikely pair of detectives I have ever seen.”—Rincey Abraham, Book Riot

From the Publisher

2018-05-15
Though they've both been put out to pasture, Barack Obama and Joe Biden team up once again to solve a murder practically in the former vice president's backyard.During all those years commuting between Delaware and Washington, Biden got to know every single Amtrak conductor. His favorite was Finn Donnelly, even before the stroke his wife, Darlene, suffered brought them even closer together. Now Finn is dead, inexplicably run over by a train as he lay unmoving on the tracks. When Grace Donnelly tells Biden that her father took out a $1 million insurance policy shortly before his death but the company, saying they suspect suicide, doesn't want to pay out, Biden vows to get to the bottom of Finn's death. True, he has no experience as a detective and scarcely any more as a logical thinker. But he does enjoy an intermittent alliance with the still-powerful Obama. Even though "there was no love lost between Barack and me," Obama keeps turning up at Biden's home, sharing sensitive information with him, and goading him to challenge Wilmington cops Detective Dan Capriotti, who's unenthusiastic, and Lt. Selena Esposito, who's downright hostile, by opening his own investigation. Together the salt-and-pepper duo, taking a leaf from the film My Fellow Americans, swap aphorisms, indulge in high-speed car chases, and occasionally do some actual detection. Shaffer takes the edge off his last satire (The Day of the Donald, 2016)—the nicest touch here is the failure of a single character to mention the name of Obama's successor—and conservatives are as unlikely to be offended by the unlikely sleuths as liberals are to be soothed or cheered.The mystery is wafer-thin and the solution unsatisfying, but the cool, cerebral ex-POTUS is a reasonable stand-in for Sherlock Holmes, and his ex-VPOTUS, by turns appealingly modest and laughably self-satisfied, is in some ways a better Watson than the good doctor himself.

Kirkus Reviews