Improving Your Lie

by John Tanner

Recently divorced and in the midst of a mid-life crisis, Charlie Penrod needs a job, an attitude adjustment, to stop sleeping with married women, and to lower his golf handicap, but not necessarily in that order. Enter eighty-three year old Walter Gunther Thorpe, a rancher and professional smoker trapped in an old folks home who decides to take on Charlie as a project. Declared by a crooked judge to be incompetent, Walter enlists Charlie's help in recovering his dignity and what an ambulance-chasing nephew and his cronies are attempting to steal. The hook that gets Charlie is Walter's claim to be Charlie's long lost grandfather. The job Walter offers? Prevent a crew that includes the nephew, the nephew's scheming wife, the homophobic preacher she's sleeping with, and a pedophile in the preacher's employ from achieving their grand plan. How? By throwing a series of wrenches in the works whenever possible. What Charlie quickly comes to realize is that Walter's stuff is just the tip of the iceberg and that getting beaten up by a surgically enhanced Junior Leaguer's husband is nothing compared to what the bad guys will do if Charlie actually succeeds. To put it bluntly, Charlie is in no way qualified to break up a criminal conspiracy on his own. He enlists the help of an unlikely crew that includes an exotic dancer with a degree in English, a computer genius who specializes in dandruff and strip clubs, a reluctant lawyer, a forensic accountant with a broken nose, and a mega church pastor. Among his friends who try and keep him on the straight and narrow are his ex-wife, the Junior Leauguer, his ex-boss, a born-again Christian, and a retired proctologist who specializes in busting Charlie's balls. Together they form an unlikely band of misfits trying their best to improve their lot in life, date above their social standing, play as much golf as possible, and beat the bad guys. Winning will require learning to have a little faith in themselves and each other and to figure out what is really important in life.

310 pages, Paperback

Published February 11, 2015