Classmate Murders

ABOUT Bob Moats

Bob Moats
Sixty year old Detroit area resident, Bob Moats, has been writing short stories and plays for as long as he can remember. He has lost most of his original stories, typed or handwritten, in the numerous moves he has made from his hometown of Fraser, Michigan to Northern Michigan, to Las Veg More...

Description

Jim Richards has reluctantly turn sixty and has just quit his job as a security guard. He describes himself as "I live in my old bedroom in my parents house, lousy credit score, over-weight, balding, gray beard, I drink at least 8 beers a night, I'm now unemployed and I just became a senior citizen, I'm such a loser". One day he receives an email from a childhood sweetheart he hasn't seen in over 40 years, pleading for help but he doesn't get to her in time. A killer is now stalking and killing his old female classmates (while they are under police protection) for unknown reasons and Jim, along with his only friend Buck, a big, mustachioed biker, are trying to stop the killer before the class of '67 has lost any more of it's female alumni.

I've always been interested in writing and wanted to be a writer, and wrote a number of short stories throughout the years. I even wrote a fantasy novella called "Crystal Prison of Kyr". I had the desire to be a writer but never did anything about it on a grand scale, to write a full blown novel, let alone seven of them. I even wrote a three act comedy play "Happily Ever After" that ran for sixteen sold out performances back in 1985 in Detroit. In 2009, I became unemployed and then one day, I was sitting at my laptop when a thought came to me, it was the first paragraph of the book. They say once you get the first line the rest is easy and it was. I wrote that book "Classmate Murders" in one month and had a few friends read and comment, which were good comments, but one woman sent my book back to me with punctuation corrections on just about every page, I sat and did the corrections and printed the book out. I write crime stories because I love that genre of books. I read a couple of books a month in e-book form on my Palm TX. I've read just about every Alex Cross book by James Patterson and I've read all 30-something books of the "in Death" series by Nora Roberts writing as J. D. Robb about the futuristic police detective, Eve Dallas. My other crime heroes are Spenser, Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone in separate books by Robert B. Parker, Travis McGee books by John D. MacDonald and Harry Bosch books by Michael Connelly.

The Classmate Murders by Bob Moats

Bob has invented a character that people will identify with as the boomers grow older. This character, Jim Richards, really grows on you!

Sixty years old and unemployed, Jim lives with his eighty something year old parents and his dad’s health is failing. He surfs/plays on his computer, drinks beer (but only after 8 pm – max was 8 beers, cutting back to 6….)

Then his life suddenly, but very believably, changes; he becomes involved in a murder investigation, leading to meeting his “GIRL” from high school from over forty years ago! It sounds corny, but it isn’t.

Moats does the job. Very beautifully written. A must read!

Joanne Chase, Cut to the Chase Reviews

Reviewed January 9, 2010