The Perfect Family

Description

The Perfect Family-----------------mystery novel------------------101, 083 words “However often the thread may be torn out of your hands, you must develop enough patience to wind it up again and again.” --------------Architect Walter Gropius “Friendship remains. Somehow, love remains—and the most precious gift, doubt. --------------Writer Jorge Luis Borges “A man can do only what a man can do. But if he does that each day, he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.” --------------Missionary and philosopher Albert Schweitzer Joel Ramsey’s lasting memory as he grew up was his family clustered around the Christmas tree with smiles from his mom and sister, the same old jokes from his dad, and the romping through the debris of their dog Toto. It was the perfect family. Possibly it was that stability that enabled him to become a successful cop, dedicated to keeping others safe. One day that image was shattered when one of his own buddies on the force walked into the parents’ home and arrested Joel’s dad for murder. Of course it was a mistake, but when his dad later explained what had happened, to Joel it might not have been a mistake. His dad might be a killer. Joel sets out to prove that his dad did not do that crime, but doubt becomes his constant companion as he discovers his dad was not the man he thought he was. Joel’s dive into the past show him an unreliable angry man instead of the warm steadfast father he knew. But that was the young immature John Ramsey. He had matured. Or had he? Joel’s journey to find that killer of that teen-age girl takes him into the corridors of power in Washington where the plot thickens so thickly that he begins to choke on it. He was not ready for what he finds, and comes within a seconds of destroying lives himself. There is a price that is paid for awareness, and sometimes the cost is too high. ----------------------------John Osipowicz (Bio) As a youth, reading was my passion. Because of my love for literature I guess it was natural that I would gravitate to teaching English. I was married while I was in college and for financial reasons I sidetracked my teaching desire for a bit to go into advertising with the Chicago Tribune. There was some creativity possible there, but after a few months I was counting the bumps on the road as I traveled from client to client. An opportunity opened up at my old high school in Madison Wisconsin to teach. This was a long time ago. Being a full-time teacher, baseball coach, and yearbook adviser, I made the enormous salary of $5000. With one daughter already born and two more on the way for the next six years we barely survived financially. Still feeling the pinch monetarily, I decide to take a business venture to Philadelphia selling yearbooks. For one year as I sat in school offices waiting to talk to Principals, I discovered I was paying attention much more to the students than my sales pitch. So back I went into teaching and stayed there for the next thirty-four years. I knew now I was in the right field. When I retired after forty total years in teaching, I looked forward to freedom from getting up each morning at five A.M. However, that freedom came with a price—boredom. There was only so much TV I could watch. I decided to take up writing, and I’ve been doing that ever since. The only real tragedy in my life is that two years ago our dog of seventeen years died. The memory of a loved one never dies.