To be clear at the outset, you should not expect a realistic picture of small-town crime when you read Justin Halpern’s comic masterpiece, Get Lost. What you’ll get instead is a fiendishly clever story that somehow involves a missing woman, corrupt almond farmers, a Big Box warehouse, bent cops, Russian gangsters, and a crazed, gun-toting Army vet. And we follow the story through the increasingly dangerous efforts of a charming former pro baseball player and his obnoxious daughter to find that missing woman. She’s his estranged ex-wife and her estranged mother. Got it? Well, no way. You’ve got to read the book. And you won’t regret it for a minute. Amazingly, the whole thing fits together. And despite all the nastiness, it’s really a lot of fun.
So, here’s the deal
Ever since Lila Dixon can remember, her mother has been disappearing. Sometimes for days on end. Back when Mattie Wilkerson and Lila’s dad, John “Dix” Dixon, were together, and she was living at home, and ever since. And Mattie’s nuts, of course. “She once didn’t pay her utilities for three months because the bill came in an orange envelope she found so lovely she didn’t want to ruin it by opening it.” But this disappearance may be different. Dix is in jail on suspicion of murdering Mattie, and Lila has to go back home to talk the sheriff into letting him out.
The family had lived in California’s Central Valley town of Los Armarios about an hour and a half north of Bakersfield. Dix was the local baseball legend. He’d once been recruited by the Cincinnati Reds. Unfortunately, that ended before it started because he’d killed his girlfriend driving drunk while she was giving him a handjob. He’d done a stretch in prison for that for years. And both he and Mattie had abandoned Lila, leaving her to grow up in foster care. But the people of Los Armarios loved old Dix. He could charm the pants off a rattlesnake, if snakes wore pants. This time, though, charm may not be enough. The sheriff is bent on sending him back to prison—because, well, Dix had screwed his wife while the sheriff lay in a coma in a hospital. And Lila’s in a bind.
Get Lost by Justin Halpern (2026) 250 pages ★★★★★
Russian gangsters, cutthroat almond farmers, and a vindictive sheriff
In the past, when Mattie disappeared, she’d always returned, sooner or later. Rarely after more than a few days. But there’s no sign of her. And Lila reluctantly agrees to help Dix find her so they can prove his innocence to the sheriff. Then the real troubles begin.
First, they discover that someone had deposited $250,000 into Mattie’s bank account. Only for her to withdraw the funds immediately. And then a threatening note gets slipped under the door of Lila’s motel door. It seems clear that Mattie may be in real danger. And that could mean Lila and Dix might be, too. But the police investigation into Mattie’s disappearance is going nowhere. So Lila and Dix set out to follow the meager clues surrounding that huge bank deposit. Which the sheriff doesn’t seem to have discovered.
Now, all of a sudden, new players come on scene. First, a family of Russian gangsters somehow convinced that Lila and Dix’s search for Mattie threatens their money-laundering operation. Then that gun-toting former soldier whom Dix had cheated by installing a defective old water heater at his home. And, as if that’s not enough trouble, the region’s cutthroat almond farmers turn up in their lives. The whole story gives new meaning to the term clusterf**k. But it’s funny as hell. And, in the best tradition of suspense fiction, the ending is a shocker.
The comparisons to Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard are both obvious and apt. Justin Halpern has got what it takes to join the pantheon of great comic crime writers.
About the author
Justin Halpern built a writing career on the basis of his father’s off-hand comments at home. The old man was a professor of nuclear medicine at the University of California, San Diego, but was known as a “profane comic genius,” “Lenny Bruce with a stethoscope.” Halpern recorded those comments in a Twitter feed that quickly attracted millions of followers, then in a bestselling book and a television sitcom based on the feed. Get Lost is the third of his three books.
Halpern, the son, was born in San Diego in 1980 and attended San Diego State University. He played baseball there. He’s been married since 2011. The couple divides their time between San Diego and Los Angeles.
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