title: Any Resemblance to Actual Persons: A Novel
author:  Kevin Allardice 
description: Community college adjunct English professor Paul McWeeney is outraged when he learns that his ditzy sister, Edie, is about to publish a book identifying their late father, TV screenwriter George McWeeney, as the murderer of Elizabeth Short, the iconic Black Dahlia, whose unsolved 1947 murder in Los Angeles spawned books and films. Edie credits her therapist with helping her recover repressed childhood memories that implicate her father. Paul resolves to use a two-week break between school terms to write a cease and desist letter to the publisher. What begins as a project filled with Olympian self-regard becomes an obsession that dives deep into the weeds of the Dahlia murder and also chronicles the dissolution of Pauls so-called life. Allardices first novel attempts many things as both crime story and character study and often succeeds. Its quite a funny book, by turns broad and sly, and occasionally, its shocking, as when Paul uses Ritalin to face grading students assignments and later upgrades to cocaine for energy and clarity. Through it all, though, we empathize with his travail. --Thomas Gaughan
zlib_text: ![](../images/00001.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright © 2013 Penelope Douglas
  
  
  
  
  
  Cover Design © 2013 Cover to Cover Designs
  
  
  
  
  
  Interior Design by Angela McLaurin, Fictional Formats
  
  
  
  
  
  ISBN-13: 978-1494289102
  
  
  ISBN-10: 1494289105
  
  
  
  
  
  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976,
  no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in
  any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without
  the prior written permission of the author.
  
  
  
  
  
  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the
  product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
  to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/00002.gif)
  
  
  [prologue](part0005.html#a_00)
  
  
  [chapter 1](part0006.html#a_00)
  
  
  [chapter 2](part0007.html#a_00)
  
  
  [chapter 3](part0008.html#a_00)
  
  
  [chapter 4](part0009.html#a_00)
  
  
  [chapter 5](part0010.html#a_00)
  
  
  [chapter 6](