Hope Never Dies by Andrew Shaffer

Quirk Books, 304 pages, $14.99

I was sometimes entertained by Andrew Shaffer’s novel, “Hope Never Dies,” starring the avatars of Joe Biden and Barak Obama. The book wasn’t overly political, there was a lot of humor and bro-buddy badinage, and Biden’s Jimmy Buffet wardrobe was infecting the imagination. That is, I was mostly entertained until Barak Obama gleefully whomped a witness upside the head with a shotgun. Whaaaaat? That was one toke over the line, buddy.

With “Hope Never Dies,” Obama can join the presidential mystery club, currently populated by Roosevelt and Lincoln (and his vampires), even though it is former vice president Joe Biden who is the narrator of the book.

I will be awaiting the inevitable effort by Shaffer or someone else at making Donald Trump and Mike Pence into crime solvers.