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A Sheriff Luke McWhorter Mystery
One Good and Deadly Deed: A Sheriff Luke McWhorter Mystery
Sheriff Luke McWhorter is back with another sharp supernatural procedural
It was not Luke McWhorter's plan to become a law enforcement officer when he left for Yale Divinity School. But three generations of his family had worn the star, and after graduation, the needs of his community called him home to serve and protect. His theological training and his seventeen-year career as sheriff suddenly collide when bodies start piling up in Flagler, Texas, one that might be connected to a Palestinian woman impregnated with DNA from the era of Noah's Ark.
In this fast-moving whodunit, McWhorter needs all the help he can get. He is joined by his chief deputy, Charles "Chuck" Del Emma; his FBI-agent girlfriend, Angie Steele; two precocious college students; and a 4,000-year-old mummy. Together, they tackle a crime spree that reaches all the way to the Middle East.
It was not Luke McWhorter's plan to become a law enforcement officer when he left for Yale Divinity School. But three generations of his family had worn the star, and after graduation, the needs of his community called him home to serve and protect. His theological training and his seventeen-year career as sheriff suddenly collide when bodies start piling up in Flagler, Texas, one that might be connected to a Palestinian woman impregnated with DNA from the era of Noah's Ark.
In this fast-moving whodunit, McWhorter needs all the help he can get. He is joined by his chief deputy, Charles "Chuck" Del Emma; his FBI-agent girlfriend, Angie Steele; two precocious college students; and a 4,000-year-old mummy. Together, they tackle a crime spree that reaches all the way to the Middle East.
312 pages, Paperback
Published October 6, 2020
17 people are currently reading
13 people want to read
About the author
Dudley Lynch
20 books8 followersDudley Lynch has published by-lined articles in 250 periodicals on six continents, including Reader's Digest, Business Week, Newsweek, Fortune Magazine (special sections), The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor and The Economist. His book, Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World (written with a colleague), was a Literary Guild alternative section, has been published in seven languages and made best-seller lists in France, Germany and Austria. Your High-Performance Business Brain was a Macmillan Book Club selection. The President from Texas was the first young-adult biography of Lyndon B. Johnson. His out-of-print work, The Duke of Duval, a political biography, has commanded prices as high as $3,000 each on Amazon.com.
Dudley attended one of the three church universities in a semi-isolated West Texas community much like the location of this work. (His father was a preacher for more than 50 years for the Churches of Christ, a Southern-based evangelical group.) With two journalism degrees, including a master's degree in mass communications, he also majored as an undergraduate in religion. But he has spent most of his career as a writer and researcher on how the brain handles beliefs and creativity, which is also the focus of his blog, LEAP!psych. He is the president of Brain Technologies Corporation, Gainesville, Florida. For information about his self-help books, go to www.braintechnologies.com.
Connect with Dudley Lynch:
Email: dudley@braintechnologires.com
Company website: https://www.braintechnologies.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/brainleaper and
Blog: http://www.braintechnologies.com/blog
Goodreads author's page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
Smashwords Interview: https://www.smashwords.com/interview/...
Smashwords profile page: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/vi...
Dudley attended one of the three church universities in a semi-isolated West Texas community much like the location of this work. (His father was a preacher for more than 50 years for the Churches of Christ, a Southern-based evangelical group.) With two journalism degrees, including a master's degree in mass communications, he also majored as an undergraduate in religion. But he has spent most of his career as a writer and researcher on how the brain handles beliefs and creativity, which is also the focus of his blog, LEAP!psych. He is the president of Brain Technologies Corporation, Gainesville, Florida. For information about his self-help books, go to www.braintechnologies.com.
Connect with Dudley Lynch:
Email: dudley@braintechnologires.com
Company website: https://www.braintechnologies.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/brainleaper and
Blog: http://www.braintechnologies.com/blog
Goodreads author's page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
Smashwords Interview: https://www.smashwords.com/interview/...
Smashwords profile page: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/vi...
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 5, 2020
I recently finished this book, and I don’t know how to rate this. First, this was the first book I’ve read by this author. You don’t need to have read the first one to be fine reading this one. The book was well-written structurally, and the plot was interesting if a little convoluted. Now here’s where it gets a little complicated. The characters were a little hard to get to know, and the book read a lot like a report instead of a fast-paced thriller. Add to that, there was a lot of unnecessary description. I mean, a lot, and this made the author tell us what happened as opposed to showing us. This is also classified as a supernatural mystery, but I don’t know where exactly the supernatural came in to it. I am giving this a 3.5 rounded up to a four star. It was OK, and I was intrigued to find out what was going on.
June 24, 2020
One Good and Deadly Deed is a gruesome murder mystery in small town Texas. Sheriff Luke McWhorter comes from a law enforcement family, and he is a graduate from divinity school. One Good and Deadly Deed is the second instalment in the Sheriff Luke McWhorter Mystery series written by the prolific author Dudley Lynch.
Sheriff McWhorter is called to the particularly gruesome scene where the two pilots have been killed by being pushed into airplane propeller blades. Mysteriously the FBI and three divinity universities all seem to be involved in some manner. McWhorter’s girlfriend, a special agent for the FBI knows more than she lets on. A series of journals left by the pilots leaves some clues about their last days.
Hemingway’s writes
“if a writer knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water”.
Dudley Lynch takes the opposite approach much to the loss of coherency in this novel. It is far too wordy and therefore confusing. In my opinion the entire discourse needs to be much more direct
I am totally frustrated by this novel and believe it should have significant editing. Lynch goes from thought to thought frequently to the point that I lose the entire train of thought. In many cases, by the time Sheriff McWhorter gets to his point I have lost the point altogether. In my opinion, a murder mystery that is so poorly addressed that one is not clear about who did it and why they did it needs to be modified.
I cannot recommend this book to people because I feel it is very vague and too wordy. I give it a 1 on 5. I want to thank NetGalley and ECW Press for providing me with a digital copy of the novel in exchange for a honest review
Sheriff McWhorter is called to the particularly gruesome scene where the two pilots have been killed by being pushed into airplane propeller blades. Mysteriously the FBI and three divinity universities all seem to be involved in some manner. McWhorter’s girlfriend, a special agent for the FBI knows more than she lets on. A series of journals left by the pilots leaves some clues about their last days.
Hemingway’s writes
“if a writer knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water”.
Dudley Lynch takes the opposite approach much to the loss of coherency in this novel. It is far too wordy and therefore confusing. In my opinion the entire discourse needs to be much more direct
I am totally frustrated by this novel and believe it should have significant editing. Lynch goes from thought to thought frequently to the point that I lose the entire train of thought. In many cases, by the time Sheriff McWhorter gets to his point I have lost the point altogether. In my opinion, a murder mystery that is so poorly addressed that one is not clear about who did it and why they did it needs to be modified.
I cannot recommend this book to people because I feel it is very vague and too wordy. I give it a 1 on 5. I want to thank NetGalley and ECW Press for providing me with a digital copy of the novel in exchange for a honest review
May 31, 2020
I would give this book zero stars but that isn’t an option.
I received a copy of this novel from netgalley. I noticed that it has zero reviews on goodreads and that concerned me. I have not read the first book in this series.
When I read the description, I thought this could be a cool idea. Unfortunately, as soon as I read the first two pages, I was completely turned off. I did not like this book. It barely had a plot. The main character is really, really annoying and impossible to like.
Throughout the book I was inundated with information, events and descriptions of things that were NOT AT ALL RELEVANT. I thought, at the beginning, that maybe the extra description would be a small clue to the story later. It wasn’t. It was like the author had to hit a word count so added description of everything and everyone EXCEPT THE PROTAGONIST. That was weird. I never got a good sense of the guy, but maybe that’s in the first book?
The fact that he’s a preacher is impossible to miss in the first chapter and then non-existent until the end of the book where he has a two page (!), detailed existential crisis (while trying to go through evidence) that has nothing to do with the crime.
The crime is obvious and recorded among unnecessary and annoying bible-speak in the first pages. It is never actually solved. It tries to twist and turn but it isn’t very interesting. It’s difficult to read because there is so much description told through the narrator’s stream of conscience. At the end, two other perpetrators come to light that have nothing to do with the crime and a questionable relationship to “the mystery”.
The crime and the mystery are not the same and barely related. They involve the same people. The mystery is uninteresting and anti-climactic. I’m not certain where the climax was supposed to be in this novel because it wasn’t a revelation. I enjoy a good twist on a religious belief or something adjacent; that’s why I thought this book might be interesting. It wasn’t. The concept was just not handled well. It was boring and presented within, and bogged down by, all the extra, unrelated descriptions. What was the point?
I finished it, but only because I received an ARC and thought it was the right thing to do.
I will stop here. There are so many things I disliked and none that I liked. I did not like this book at all. I would never recommend it to anyone.
I received a copy of this novel from netgalley. I noticed that it has zero reviews on goodreads and that concerned me. I have not read the first book in this series.
When I read the description, I thought this could be a cool idea. Unfortunately, as soon as I read the first two pages, I was completely turned off. I did not like this book. It barely had a plot. The main character is really, really annoying and impossible to like.
Throughout the book I was inundated with information, events and descriptions of things that were NOT AT ALL RELEVANT. I thought, at the beginning, that maybe the extra description would be a small clue to the story later. It wasn’t. It was like the author had to hit a word count so added description of everything and everyone EXCEPT THE PROTAGONIST. That was weird. I never got a good sense of the guy, but maybe that’s in the first book?
The fact that he’s a preacher is impossible to miss in the first chapter and then non-existent until the end of the book where he has a two page (!), detailed existential crisis (while trying to go through evidence) that has nothing to do with the crime.
The crime is obvious and recorded among unnecessary and annoying bible-speak in the first pages. It is never actually solved. It tries to twist and turn but it isn’t very interesting. It’s difficult to read because there is so much description told through the narrator’s stream of conscience. At the end, two other perpetrators come to light that have nothing to do with the crime and a questionable relationship to “the mystery”.
The crime and the mystery are not the same and barely related. They involve the same people. The mystery is uninteresting and anti-climactic. I’m not certain where the climax was supposed to be in this novel because it wasn’t a revelation. I enjoy a good twist on a religious belief or something adjacent; that’s why I thought this book might be interesting. It wasn’t. The concept was just not handled well. It was boring and presented within, and bogged down by, all the extra, unrelated descriptions. What was the point?
I finished it, but only because I received an ARC and thought it was the right thing to do.
I will stop here. There are so many things I disliked and none that I liked. I did not like this book at all. I would never recommend it to anyone.
October 10, 2020
I would not recommend reading this without having read the previous instalment for one main reason. It is hard to get used to the Sheriff’s brand of humour without having already met him before.
I picked this up, having liked the style of narration of the first book. This time around as well, the Sheriff is handed a grotesque murder scene and way too many random suppositions of what happened in the airfield. He is having doubts about his chosen field of work as the church is still calling to him. He is also wondering about the future of his relationship. The randomness of the story had its own charm, but I never got a chance to be invested in it. I have to circle back to the point that if you pick up this series, look for a very unexpected set of events thrown together as well as a lot of smart-talking characters. The plot itself is secondary. There is not much more that I can say about the book without being repetitive but it is a quick read.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.
I picked this up, having liked the style of narration of the first book. This time around as well, the Sheriff is handed a grotesque murder scene and way too many random suppositions of what happened in the airfield. He is having doubts about his chosen field of work as the church is still calling to him. He is also wondering about the future of his relationship. The randomness of the story had its own charm, but I never got a chance to be invested in it. I have to circle back to the point that if you pick up this series, look for a very unexpected set of events thrown together as well as a lot of smart-talking characters. The plot itself is secondary. There is not much more that I can say about the book without being repetitive but it is a quick read.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.
September 29, 2020
ONE GOOD AND DEADLY DEED
A sheriff Luke McWhorter mystery
Dudley Lynch
2020:
“What is this,” I wondered. Let’s not judge the book by its cover. Let’s wander in…and around and around. This book lacks tension and lacks a story arc that brings the reader along.
It has characters than can be interesting. It has some intelligent and interesting segments. It has some history, some current events but alas, it gets bogged down in some petty details. Details that zap the pace. Blame the editor?
It was page 286 and still WTF – what are we trying to solve – mummy, death, who is whom? 75 chapters and counting…
The author, like sheriff Luke McWhorter, is a smart learned guy. Looking forward to the next chapter.
Lino Matteo
See more at https://wordpress.com/block-editor/po...
A sheriff Luke McWhorter mystery
Dudley Lynch
2020:
“What is this,” I wondered. Let’s not judge the book by its cover. Let’s wander in…and around and around. This book lacks tension and lacks a story arc that brings the reader along.
It has characters than can be interesting. It has some intelligent and interesting segments. It has some history, some current events but alas, it gets bogged down in some petty details. Details that zap the pace. Blame the editor?
It was page 286 and still WTF – what are we trying to solve – mummy, death, who is whom? 75 chapters and counting…
The author, like sheriff Luke McWhorter, is a smart learned guy. Looking forward to the next chapter.
Lino Matteo
See more at https://wordpress.com/block-editor/po...
October 4, 2020
A different kind of western with a few very unique twists. I expected a more conventional western but enjoyed the all terrain tracks on which Dudley Lynch takes his readers. One Good and Deadly Deed finds Sheriff Luke McWhorter investigating a decidedly gruesome murder of two pilots. McWhorter is a 4th generation lawman who graduated divinity school before taking up the star. His divinity education can sometimes get in the way of his crime solving.
McWhorter is a good character. The supporting characters are well developed too. The community and era they live in gives the author many options to follow in search of the killer. Throw in a little supernatural extra curricular events and the story loses some of it's excitement to confusion. The story was enjoyable but it was a slow read trying to keep up with the often changing scenes and scenery.
McWhorter is a good character. The supporting characters are well developed too. The community and era they live in gives the author many options to follow in search of the killer. Throw in a little supernatural extra curricular events and the story loses some of it's excitement to confusion. The story was enjoyable but it was a slow read trying to keep up with the often changing scenes and scenery.
September 18, 2024
One start off for again not numbering the chapters- if you forget to bookmark in ebook and something happens and your reader doesn't save and you're 64 and your memory gets a bit shoddy it really messes you about! Then in the first chapter the author states Sheriff Luke lost his one eye when he was seven yet in the first book he stated that he lost his eye in the first year as Sheriff! By now I'm annoyed as hell so I don't know if I'm going to finish it I went to another book! I'm not counting as a spoiler either. If you can get over those two points and the fact that his murders are as bloody as Mr Patterson's then he's a pretty good writer otherwise don't even start!
September 26, 2020
Sheriff Luke McWhorter has a real mes on his hands- two pilots have been shoved into the propellers of an airplane. Who did it and why? There are too many suspects and too many reasons in this complicated mystery that would have benefited from another edit to pare some of it out. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A rare pass from me.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews