This book is a novella. Jim Richards is a thirty-one year old bachelor who doesn't realize that he's on his way to a marriage that he isn't ready for. He also doesn't know about his fiancé's crazy parents who make Jim's life miserable, as hard as he tries to adapt to married life. Plagued by oddball neighbors and friends that make his already shaky marriage even more unstable, Jim struggles to keep the peace in his two-room flat in the suburbs of Detroit.This is an early look at the life of Jim Richards from the murder novel series, before he became a private investigator and finally married the woman of his dreams. The story has been adapted by Bob Moats from a stage play he wrote in 1985, turning the script into this book to give readers a private look at the senior citizen sleuth when he was a young man, and not very wise when it came to women. This book is a novella.