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Popped Off
Popped Off
Popped Off
Ebook282 pages2 hours

Popped Off

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this ebook

For stay-at-home dad Deuce Winters, the cutthroat world of suburban kiddie sports leagues is unavoidable. In his small town of Rose Petal, Texas, Moises Huber is known as the King of Soccer. But it seems the king may have fallen from his throne when he disappears--along with $73,000 of the Rose Petal Youth Soccer Association's registration fees. Deuce calls foul and begins a bizarre search that leads him to a high-stakes gambling ring, a band of shrewd smugglers, and one heckuva Texas-sized mega church. As he closes in on the truth, Deuce has only one goal in mind: stay on the ball and out of the penalty zone before his opponent can make a killer pass--and still have dinner ready on time. . .

"Laugh-out-loud funny. A terrific read!" --Laura Levine on Stay at Home Dead
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 24, 2011
ISBN9780758279668
Popped Off
Author

Jeffrey Allen

Jeff Allen is a columnist for Dancing USA magazine and the author of four books on social and ballroom dancing. He holds membership credentials with the North American Dance Teachers Association, Inc., and the Pan American Teachers Association. After competing in national and international competitions and winning the gold closed level at the North American Championships, Allen turned professional in 1984. However, he considers his greatest accomplishments to be the more than 30 top teacher awards he has won and being listed among the top teachers in America by DVIDA as a regional examiner and teacher trainer.

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Reviews for Popped Off

Rating: 3.69999995 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Once again, Deuce Winters finds himself caught up in the mystery of the latest dead body to surface in Rose Petal, Texas, Now a part time partner to little detective Victor Doolittle, he has a few more resources to find out what happened to the soccer associations money. Carly's adventures to Vacation Bible School are eerily reminiscent of my own youth, where the moms had us visiting each others groups, wisely keeping us very busy. I really like Deuce's challenges with parenting and the push back he still gets from his hometown for their family's unconventional choice.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Book source ~ ARC. My review is voluntary and honest.Deuce Winters is a stay-at-home dad who inadvertently solved a mystery with the help of a private investigator (see book 1 Stay At Home Dead). Now, it seems he needs the annoying PI again for a case of the missing King of Soccer and $73K of youth soccer association fees. The more Deuce digs the more complicated things get, but he feels he needs to find Moises Huber and the money for the kids’ sakes.Humorous and twisty this mystery kept me guessing until the end. Lots of colorful characters and amusing situations, but Deuce’s daughter, Carly, takes the spotlight. Adorable! If you like small town stories with humor and a decent mystery then don’t pass up this book or book 1. You won't be sorry!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is very cute, and pretty much delivers exactly what's promised on the tin: a light, frothy mystery that's very easy to read and very entertaining.Deuce Winters (I know, I know, that is the name of a douchebag) is your typical stay at home parent, carting his kid to many different sorts of activities (soccer, swim lessons, VBS). He has a side business as a private investigator, and he's dragged into a case when he learns that Moe Huber has stolen $73K from his daughter's soccer association and has vanished into thin air. The soccer association is fee-driven and will have to completely shut down, which nobody wants - even if the kids are playing soccer for fun instead of serious competition. So, reluctantly, he begins to track down Huber and runs into quite a few twists and turns along the way.The characters are really nicely drawn. Deuce narrates in the first person, and its a refreshingly irreverent point of view. He is devoted to his wife and his daughter and, contrary to the name, is the opposite of a douchebag. One of the subplots is how his wife is determined to have another baby, and she is just as driven in her personal life as she is in her career as an attorney: she charts out the next two months of their sex life, and holds him to a strict schedule in order to maximize her chances of getting pregnant. It's rather hilarious, actually; he learns about all the things that affect his sperm count.She is also very practical and level-headed, and lends her legal expertise to his crazy schemes as a PI. He has a partner in the PI biz, Victor Anthony Doolittle, who is just as loud as he is short. He apparently helped Deuce clear his name in the first book of this series, and they teamed up shortly thereafter. They rib each other constantly, which is also funny, but the midget jokes can start to run a little thin. They have a great buddy-cop partner thing, tho.Even the characters central to this story are pretty nicely fleshed out. Though I could've done without the constant description of the 350 lb Belinda (head of the kiddie soccer association), who sweats profusely in the Texas heat. That was the one blip on the character radar, and I guess it can be written off as it being a first person male POV. Mercifully, he doesn't ogle the sorority sisters who show up about halfway through the book to nearly the same nauseating degree, which is nice. And his scenes with his daughter are really cute.The plot is a bit on the convoluted side, but in the context of the story, it makes sense. Deuce is not the most patient person on the planet, so he tries to cut through the woo-woo bullshit pretty quickly, which I appreciated. I definitely kept turning the pages this afternoon and (in spite of the screeches of a dying squirrel) managed to get through it all in about three hours. There was no heart-stopping, edge-of-your-seat denouement, but the ending was wrapped up quite nicely, and the story actually ends on a very sweet note, with Deuce's wife revealing that she's pregnant.

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Popped Off - Jeffrey Allen

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