Imogene’s Grand Fiasco

Book 2 Coming June 24

Seventy-five-year-old Imogene Taylor just wants to smoke her Marlboros and watch the world go by from her divan. But fate has other plans.

When Imogene’s new job at a pawn shop turns out to be part of an elaborate criminal scheme, she finds herself trapped between warring mobsters, dirty cops, and a mysterious puppet master plotting to rob the Bank of the West during the town’s Fourth of July parade. With her parole on the line and innocent lives at stake, Imogene must use her prison-honed instincts to untangle a web of blackmail, corruption, and murder before the whole town erupts in violence.

Standing between chaos and salvation is one tough-as-nails grandmother with a .380 in her purse and a voice in her head named Ange offering questionable advice. But even Imogene’s quick wit and steady trigger finger may not be enough when the fireworks start flying and blood begins spilling on the streets of West Valley.

The Blind Devotion of Imogene

Book 1

In 1973, Imogene Taylor is seventy-five years old, on parole for murder, and works at a store that sells dented canned goods. Twelve years earlier, she went to prison for killing her love-of-her-life-husband, Wayne. She called it an accident. The judge and jury called it murder. Imogene’s parole agent is constantly on her case, looking to send her back to prison.

During her time in prison, Imogene had to vent her angst at someone and sent the sitting Presidents (during the ten years in prison) threatening letters bringing her to the attention of the Secret Service. She does extensive research and writes a novel, Peekaboo POTUS, about the assassination of a US President. She sends the book “over the transom” to one publisher. The publisher, after being unable to contact Imogene, comes looking for her.

The Cigar, an organized crime gangster, walks into Dentco, where Imogene works, and extorts the store for protection money. Pay up or get firebombed. The entire strip center is under this threat.

At the same time, Imogene’s neighbor dies of natural causes and leaves a hoarder’s mess to his daughter, Suzanne. Imogene helps Suz clear out a pyramid of boxes filled with junk in the garage. At the bottom of the pile, they find a box with a dead woman who has been hidden for many years.

Imogene must dodge an overzealous parole agent while dealing with a dead woman in the neighbor’s garage. She’s on parole for murder, so she can’t report it to the police. No one would believe her. Imogene and Suz think the woman in the box is Suz’s long-estranged mother. Rather than reveal Suz’s father as the probable killer, Imogene convinces Suz to bury her mom under the avocado tree in the backyard. Until Thelma, Suz’s mother, appears after reading the obituary.

It’s a race to uncover the real killer as Imogene dodges gangsters, family members, and a publisher on her quest to find the truth.