In short, it’s a first-person crime noir with a memoir undertone. It takes place in Portland, New Orleans, and Montana (mostly Billings) and clocks in at 292 pages, according to Kindle. I’ve self-published it as an ebook.

If you’re starved for some riveting action – like watching a train wreck (it has a train chase) – then A KILLER STORY might be for you. It will certainly help kill some time. In truth, it could be so wretchedly bad that it’s good. That’s fine with me.

If you’re interested (and I wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t), there’s a book synopsis below and a couple links to where you can find it – on Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and a few other places I’ve never heard of.

It will set you back $4.99 (money back if you hate it and can find me). I’m happy to send you a standard pdf file of the book for FREE if you want to forego the five bucks. Just message me your email.

A heads up: This book is a bizarre work of FICTION. In other words, it’s not entirely true.

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086H5PHGY/ref=kwrp_li_stb_nodl

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and others: https://books2read.com/AKillerStory

SYNOPSIS
Based in part on personal journals, A KILLER STORY is the morally strangled tale of a guy named Teddy Murphy who in his younger years is coerced to take photos for a gang of vigilante New Orleans ex-cops who dispense justice and pain for profit and pleasure. He tries to skip town, is tracked down, and commanded to kill someone or his daughter will disappear, never to be found.

Teddy can’t kill someone (he thinks), so he concocts a mad scheme to fake the hit. The wheels come off and Teddy’s outlandish plan takes a wild turn, ending in the backcountry of remote Montana, where grizzlies and wolves outrank humans.
Will Teddy make the hit? Will he be the one killed? Will his wife leave him? Will he use his “escape bag” to run for his life? Or will he face justice himself and be redeemed for his sins? Whatever the outcome, it’s a killer story for certain.

30 YEARS SERVING THE ENTIRE EARTH

Many thanks to clients and associates who have made it possible for Les Overhead to exist for 30 plus years. As mentioned in the "Wall Street Journal". It's amazing what you can achieve with passion, hard work, creativity, scissors, and double-stick tape.

Les Overhead
Do more with Les

I flew to Billings last weekend for a friend’s memorial service and got more than a flight into the past. On August 13, 1976 this friend banged his head on an armrest while lying in the backseat of a car heading home from a bar.

The vehicle had ventured just a few feet off the road, for just seconds. The bumping broke a vertabra and cracked his universe, throwing him into a wheelchair for the rest of his life, a distance of some 40 plus years.

He was one of the good ones who so often get a bad hand. Generous beyond belief. The one who’d gather everyone left at last call and buy us all a late night dinner at Wong Village.

He was a genius math whiz poker-faced Packer fan. A railroad worker with a pocketful of cash on fire. A true class act.

His quadriplegic existence wasn’t easy but he went on living, aging, engaging in life as he rolled his shoulders forward and back and friends raised his drink with straw to his mouth. He swallowed deeply. It was a tough road to roll.

At the memorial service I talked with a guy I hadn’t seen in 25 years. I recognized him and thought he did me. But an hour later he came up and said he had no idea who I was when we talked earlier.

I was taken aback. Everyone else had aged and changed a great deal it seemed, but not I. I wondered how he couldn’t recognize me, until I went to the can and looked in the mirror and wondered who invited my dad. I must have shocked the guy. And no doubt others who pretended to know me.

The next morning after the Memorial Service I visited two matriarchs of family clans who were best friends of our family growing up. They now live next door to each other in a senior care center in Billings.

One had the marks and blotches common with an aging body, but her mind was tack-sharp. The other had not a pockmark on her, her smiling complexion still creamy smooth. But her mind was off skipping to a different tune and time. She didn’t follow too well. Both are exactly alike in one way: they face their future with grace and courage.

My visit with them left me wondering which is better – to look your worst, and have a sharp mind that knows it. Or to look fine, but have a mind that won’t focus. I vacillate between the two. Of course I should pick mind over body. But Vanity is almost my last name and it’s hard to shake.

I most surely will be an ugly old cuss and some will say I already am. Then again, maybe I won’t have to worry about it.
While in Billings I heard that the father of a rancher friend of mine had received a health diagnosis that didn’t sit well with him. So after making and eating breakfast one morning he loaded a revolver, put the barrel to his temple, and shot the diagnosis all to hell.

My mind works in morbid ways and I wondered what he’d made for breakfast. Eggs over (to the other side) easy? Scrambled? Ten pieces of bacon? Had he done the dishes? We all discussed it solemnly, put a brave face on it and said assuredly we’d do the same thing. Maybe not by pulling a trigger, but with surefire thought and action.

I wonder if I would really take that fork. Eat some eggs and bacon, clean up, then blow out the candle for good. I have no idea. I doubt it. I’m not that strong of mind, or that steady a shot. And to give up bacon forever would be hard.

When bored, I often think of ways to die. It’s amusing to me. In my mind, if you imagine in detail the circumstances of your death – like getting bit by a rattlesnake while hiking near Pictograph Cave, or keeling over from a heart attack in the grocery store and causing a cleanup on aisle 7 – the scene you imagine is guaranteed not to happen.

Because NOTHING ever happens exactly the way you envision it. It would be a cosmic fluke, near impossible. But if it does occur that I die in a grocery store on aisle 7, it’s proof the game is fixed and there’s order in the universe. Science will be advanced.

So when I saw the kangaroo headline in the Billings Gazette this weekend – the one that said, “Driver rolls car to avoid kangaroo” – I was pleased. I thought of the scene (near Fort Belknap).

The driver was taken to a hospital and a state patrolman checked on her. She said it was definitely a kangaroo. He said sure, with a smirk no doubt. Then he drove back to examine the scene and sure enough spotted a kangaroo standing 30 feet off the highway. It turned out to be a wallaby.

Now I KNOW I’ll never die in a car wreck caused by a kangaroo (or wallaby). I hope not to be paralyzed by one either – left in a wheelchair, unable to hold a gun, someone making breakfast for me.

Aging is a losing battle and time wins every time. But we still control how we spend it. I plan to spend less of mine looking in the mirror. Get lost vanity.

RIP Kevin D. and Bert H.

I flew to Billings last weekend for a friend’s memorial service and got more than a flight into the past. On August 13, 1976 this friend banged his head on an armrest while lying in the backseat of a car heading home from a bar. The vehicle had ventured just a few feet off the road, for just seconds. The bumping broke a vertabra and cracked his universe, throwing him into a wheelchair for the rest of his life, a distance of some 40 plus years.

He was one of the good ones who so often get dealt a bad hand. Generous beyond belief. The one who’d gather everyone left at last call and buy us all a late night dinner at Wong Village. He was a genius math whiz poker-faced Packer fan. A railroad worker with a pocketful of cash on fire. A true class act.

His quadriplegic existence wasn’t easy but he went on living, aging, engaging in life as he rolled his shoulders forward and back and friends raised his drink with straw to his mouth. He swallowed deeply. It was a tough road to roll.

At the memorial service I talked with a guy I hadn’t seen in 25 years. I recognized him and thought he did me. But an hour later he came up and said he had no idea who I was when we talked earlier. I was taken aback. Everyone else had aged and changed a great deal it seemed, but not I. I wondered how he couldn’t recognize me, until I went to the can and looked in the mirror and wondered who invited my dad. I must have shocked the guy. And no doubt others.

The next morning after the Memorial Service I visited two matriarchs of family clans who were best friends of our family growing up. They now live next door to each other in a senior care center in Billings. One had the marks and blotches common with an aging body, but her mind was tack-sharp. The other had not a pockmark on her, her smiling complexion still creamy smooth. But her mind was off skipping to a different tune and time. She didn’t follow too well. Both are exactly alike in one way: they face their future with grace and courage.

My visit with them left me wondering which is better – to look your worst, and have a sharp mind that knows it. Or to look fine, but have a mind that won’t focus. I vacillate between the two. Of course I should pick mind over body. But Vanity is almost my last name and it’s hard to shake. I most surely will be an ugly old cuss and some will say I already am.

Then again, maybe I won’t have to worry about it. While in Billings I heard that the father of a rancher friend of mine had received a health diagnosis that didn’t sit well with him. So after making and eating breakfast one morning he loaded a revolver, put the barrel to his temple, and shot the diagnosis all to hell.

My mind works in morbid ways and I wondered what he’d made for breakfast. Eggs over (to the other side) easy? Scrambled? Ten pieces of bacon? Had he done the dishes? We all discussed it solemnly, put a brave face on it and said assuredly we’d do the same thing. Maybe not by pulling a trigger, but with surefire thought and action.

I wonder if I would really take that fork. Eat some eggs and bacon, clean up, then blow out the candle for good. I have no idea. I doubt it. I’m not that strong of mind, or that good a shot. And to give up bacon forever would be hard.

When bored, I often think of ways to die. It’s amusing to me. In my mind, if you imagine in detail the circumstances of your death – like getting bit by a rattlesnake while out hiking near Pictograph Cave, or keeling over from a heart attack in the grocery store and causing a cleanup on aisle 7 – the scene you imagine is guaranteed not to happen. Because NOTHING ever happens exactly the way you envision it. It would be a cosmic fluke, near impossible. But if it does; if I die in a grocery store on aisle 7, it’s proof the game is fixed and there’s order in the universe. Science will be advanced.

So when I saw the kangaroo headline in the Billings Gazette this weekend – the one that said, “Driver rolls car to avoid kangaroo” – I was pleased. I thought of the scene (near Fort Belknap). The driver was taken to a hospital and a patrolman checked on her. She said it was definitely a kangaroo. He said sure, with a smirk I’m sure. Then he drove back to examine the scene and sure enough found a kangaroo standing 30 feet off the highway. It turned out to be a wallaby.

Now I KNOW I’ll never die in a car rollover caused by a kangaroo (or wallaby). I hope not to be paralyzed by one either – left in a wheelchair, unable to hold a gun, someone making breakfast for me.

Aging is a losing battle and time wins every time. But we still control how we spend it. I plan to spend less of mine looking in the mirror. Get lost vanity.

RIP Kevin D. and Bert H.