Dead Man's Hand

A Calvin Watters Mystery, Book 1

By: Luke Murphy

Narrated by: Conner Goff

What happens when the deck is stacked against you....

From NFL rising-star prospect to wanted fugitive, Calvin Watters is a sadistic African-American Las Vegas debt collector framed by a murderer who, like the Vegas police, finds him to be the perfect fall guy.

...and the cards don't fall your way?

When the brutal slaying of a prominent casino owner is followed by the murder of a well-known bookie, Detective Dale Dayton is thrown into the middle of a highly political case and leads the largest homicide investigation in Vegas in the last 12 years.

What if you're dealt a Dead Man's Hand?

Against his superiors and better judgement, Dayton is willing to give Calvin one last chance. To redeem himself, Calvin must prove his innocence by finding the real killer, while avoiding the LVMPD, as well as protect the woman he loves from a professional assassin hired to silence them.

Reviews for Dead Man's Hand

"You may want to give it the whole night, just to see how it turns out." (William Martin, New York Times best-selling author of The Lincoln Letter)

"Dead Man's Hand is a pleasure, a debut novel that doesn't read like one, but still presents original characters and a fresh new voice." (Thomas Perry, New York Times best-selling author of Poison Flower)

"Murphy writes in a clean, mean style, as compelling as a switchblade to your throat…the real deal." (Rick Mofina, award-winning author of They Disappeared)

©2018 Luke Murphy (P)2019 Luke Murphy

A promising debut

This is a great debut novel introducing some very compelling characters and a promising new series. The story is seriously suspenseful and complete. No cliffhanger, although it's set up for another book in the series.

Conner Goff is an excellent choice to narrate this audiobook, and hopefully the series. I caught a couple of "retakes" that should have been edited out, but both the production and performance are quite satisfactory.

NOTE: I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Excellent, well written story!

Excellent story by this new-to-me author! Calvin. Watters is known as a ‘knee-breaker’ working for a well known Las Vegas bookie. Calvin is tired of his meaningless ‘job’ and wants out. Except the bookie isn’t ready to let Calvin go...and helps to set him up for the murder of a prominent casino owner. Now Calvin is the suspect in, not just the casino owner’s death, but also that of the bookie. Since the real killer has friends in high places, will Calvin get justice? Detective Dale Dayton doesn’t believe that the case is as cut and dry and he’s being forced to accept. Can good detective work take down the real killer?
Excellent story with a surprising twist at the end. Looking forward to the next book.
I accepted a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Hang on for the twist

I found this author on Twitter and thought I would give it a try. The story starts out very predictable and seems like you get the answers before the questions. Hang on, it gets stronger and the ending brings a twist I didn't see coming. So much so, I will be getting the 2nd book in the series to finish to see what happens next.

Conner Goff narrates the story perfectly - a real gem performance.

Enjoyed this book thoroughly!

I'm not good at writing reviews. But I wanted to say this is a fast-paced thriller that captured my attention from the first page. I listened as often as I could and never lost interest. Likeable and believable characters, stellar narration. This is worth the listen/read.

I'm from Las Vegas, and Luke Murphy did a wonderful job representing the city. I'm looking forward to book two.

CasinoTakeover

Casino takeover combined with adultry equals money and murder. A really great start to a series.

Good Start to a new Mystery series

Dead Man's Hand was a good start to a new mystery series. I found it a very enjoyable listen and it kept me thoroughly entertained. The characters were interesting and they fit very well in the Las Vegas setting which offers a lot of opportunities for further stories. The main character Calvin Watters is likeable and has a pretty interesting back story and progression through the book and has been set up as an interesting PI in future installments.

The pacing of the book is very good and it goes by very quickly(in a good way). I like how the book was told through the perspective of different characters at times and it was all done very well. The narration by Conner Goff was great and really fit the characters well and made the story a pleasure to listen to.

The book isn't groundbreaking but it is a very solid start to a mystery series and I would definitely recommend and am looking forward to future installments of the Calvin Watters Mystery's.

"Please note I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review."

A royal flush

This audiobook was a solid listening experience. Dead Man's Hand was well narrated by Conner Goff. His straight forward narration was a great fit for the book's many point of view changes and many many characters within the novel. He did well to separate the characters enough for the listeners to tell when there is an exchange going on. His inflections came out great most of the time.

As for the novel. The majority of it was well fleshed out for making the scenes feel realistic and posing an objective for the story. I really enjoyed it. The few gripes I had with the story was that it felt a bit too drawn out to pad for time at times, when I'm just itching to skip forward to push the story. But that's me and my adhd talking.

I was given this audiobook for free in exchange for my own honest review. I have left this review voluntarily.

I would highly recommend this audiobook to anyone looking for a good listen! Great job, Conner & Luke!

Action packed

This was a fast paced action packed story involving solving murders and evading killers. It was interesting and I was keen to listen and hear how it evolved.
Note that I was given this book for free at my request and have left this objective review voluntarily.