The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy (Stewart Hoag & Lulu #7) (audiobook) by David Handler



Published in 1996 by Sunset Productions
Read by Gene Corbin
Duration: Approximately 3 hours (abridged).

Stewart "Hoagy" Hoag is a retired novelist and semi-retired ghost writer who, like the novelist Jessica  Fletcher in the old TV show Murder She Wrote, has a remarkable ability to be around when someone gets killed.

 In The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy we find Stewart and his on again / off again relationship with his celebrity ex-wife in an on again phase. They have a baby and Hoagy is still adjusting to this reality. His basset hound Lulu is not happy having been removed from her position as the de facto child of the couple to being merely the family dog.

 But, this small family's routine is thrown into an uproar when Hoagy's old literary mentor Thor Gibbs arrives on his motorcycle with his 18 year old stepdaughter on the back. Thor Gibbs is a an Ernest Hemingway-type  character that is really into the mythopoetic men's movement-type stuff, except his version of it requires a whole lot more drinking and fighting and a lot less formal ceremony. The 71 year-old Thor Gibbs has become notorious for leaving his ultra-feminist wife and running off with his 18 year old stepdaughter, Clethra. They claim to be in love and they want Hoagy to ghost write Clethra's tell-all version of the story.

 Of course, someone ends up dead and Hoagy has to scramble to put together all of the clues before the killer strikes again. Hoagy's wry comments provide a bit of comedic sanity throughout.

 Gene Corbin read this abridged version of the novel. The abridgment was skillfully done and Corbin does a very good job of creating voices for each character, especially the over-the-top Thor Gibbs. Each scene transitions with (usually) appropriate music.

 I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

 This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The Girl Who Ran Off with Daddy.

 Reviewed on November 30, 2012.

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