About
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 Vegas and back to Fraser, where he now lives. He also wrote the short fantasy novel "Crystal Prison of Kyr" and is a published playwright with his three act comedy "Happily Ever After".
Moats became one of the causalities of unemployment eary in 2009, and had time on his hands to finally pursue a life long dream of writing a full blown crime novel. Thus was born the first book, "Classmate Murders".
What followed was a series of seven books starting with "The Classmate Murders" which introduces the main character, Jim Richards, who has to admit he has become a senior citizen, reluctantly. Richards, one day, receives an email from a childhood sweetheart asking for his help, but by the time he reaches her, she has been murdered. His life turns around and he is pulled into numerous murders of women from his high school who he hasn't seen in forty years. Along with a friend of his, Buck, a big, mustached biker, they go off to track down the killer before he can get to one former classmate, Penny Wickens, a TV talk show host who Jim has just fallen for while protecting her. The killer is also murdering the women right out from under police protection, driving homicide detective Will Trapper crazy, and he slowly depends on Jim to help. There's humor, suspense, wild chases across suburban Detroit with cops, classic cars and motorcycle clubs; murder, mayhem, a good amount of romance and a twist ending.
Jim and his fellow crime fighters, continue in the other books, traveling to Las Vegas twice, back to Detroit and out to New York to solve murders involving dominatrix; mistresses; Bridezillas; magic and strip clubs.
The Sons of Godwine: Part Two of The Last Great Saxon Earls
Description
<p>Emerging from the long shadow cast by his formidable father, Harold Godwineson showed himself to be a worthy successor to the Earldom of Wessex. In the following twelve years, he became the King's most trusted advisor, practically taking the reins of government into his own hands. And on Edward the Confessor's death, Harold Godwineson mounted the throne—the first king of England not of royal blood. Yet Harold was only a man, and his rise in fortune was not blameless. Like any person aspiring to power, he made choices he wasn't particularly proud of. Unfortunately, those closest to him sometimes paid the price of his fame.<br /><br />This is a story of Godwine's family as told from the viewpoint of Harold and his younger brothers. Queen Editha, known for her Vita Ædwardi Regis, originally commissioned a work to memorialize the deeds of her family, but after the Conquest historians tell us she abandoned this project and concentrated on her husband, the less dangerous subject. In THE SONS OF GODWINE and FATAL RIVALRY, I am telling the story as it might have survived had she collected and passed on the memoirs of her tragic brothers.<br /><br />This book is part two of The Last Great Saxon Earls series. Book one, GODWINE KINGMAKER, depicted the rise and fall of the first Earl of Wessex who came to power under Canute and rose to preeminence at the beginning of Edward the Confessor's reign. Unfortunately, Godwine's misguided efforts to champion his eldest son Swegn recoiled on the whole family, contributing to their outlawry and Queen Editha's disgrace. Their exile only lasted one year and they returned victorious to London, though it was obvious that Harold's career was just beginning as his father's journey was coming to an end.<br /><br />Harold's siblings were all overshadowed by their famous brother; in their memoirs we see remarks tinged sometimes with admiration, sometimes with skepticism, and in Tostig's case, with jealousy. We see a Harold who is ambitious, self-assured, sometimes egocentric, imperfect, yet heroic. His own story is all about Harold, but his brothers see things a little differently. Throughout, their observations are purely subjective, and witnessing events through their eyes gives us an insider’s perspective.<br /><br />Harold was his mother's favorite, confident enough to rise above petty sibling rivalry but Tostig, next in line, was not so lucky. Harold would have been surprised by Tostig's vindictiveness, if he had ever given his brother a second thought. And that was the problem. Tostig's love/hate relationship with Harold would eventually destroy everything they worked for, leaving the country open to foreign conquest. This subplot comes to a crisis in book three of the series, FATAL RIVALRY.</p>
Story Behind The Book
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.
Reviews
The Classmate Murders by Bob Moats <br /><br />Bob has invented a character that people will identify with as the boomers grow older. This character, Jim Richards, really grows on you!<br /><br />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….) <br /><br />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.<br /><br />Moats does the job. Very beautifully written. A must read!<br /><p>Joanne Chase, Cut to the Chase Reviews<br /></p>Reviewed January 9, 2010
