Book Tour Dead Winner by Kevin G Chapman

About the book

Dead Winner is a treasure-hunt mystery/thriller with a love story. Or is it? It’s the story of a lonely, cautious lawyer, Rory, who has the chance to step out of his riskless life, become the hero he pretends to be in video adventure games, and win the heart of Monica, the only woman he ever loved.

When Monica and her husband, Tom, discover they have a $60 million winning lottery ticket, old friend Rory is roped in to help them set up a trust to manage the money. So far so good – except that the next week, Tom is found dead with a gunshot to his head, apparently a suicide.

Why would such a lucky man take his own life? And if it’s murder, why would his lovely wife become a suspect? And more than that…. Where is the winning lottery ticket?

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My review

Tom Williams seemed to have it all. A great job in New York, a loving wife, and he’d just won 60 million in the lottery. So why did he appear to kill himself?

It’s always so intriguing when the skeletons come out of the closet after someone dies. Rory McEntyre, Tom’s old college chum, gets pulled into the mayhem as he tries to help Monica, Tom’s widow, navigate a tangled web of police detectives, thieves, and thugs.

Chapman weaves an intriguing path of twists and turns as each new piece of information about Tom’s life is revealed, leading the reader closer to the real reason for his death.

This is such an entertaining book. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to restrain myself from reading the end to see if my guess was right about what was really going on (I was!)

I love the Noir feel to this mystery novel, which one of the characters quite correctly likens to The Maltese Falcon. It made it feel timeless yet contemporary with all the latest twenty first century technology mentioned.

Rory was a great character and I loved him. It’s nice to have a lawyer as a main character. He’s sweet, very naive, and his ethics could be refreshed, but it was easy to sympathize with him. I loved that he was a gamer and the most important things in his apartment were his consoles, gaming chair and huge tv.

Breonna, Tom’s assistant, was another character I loved. She was so capable and I loved how she handled the Northrup goons.

The different plot lines focusing on Rory, Buster, and the police were all expertly handled. I haven’t read the author’s other books, so I wasn’t aware that there were cameos from his other works, but I loved reading that there were in the afterword. I also found the choice of names interesting. I could be reading too much into things, but I thought several character names held significance.

Altogether a highly enjoyable, fast paced mystery novel with a killer hook and a satisfying conclusion.

I award Dead Winner…

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About the author

Kevin Chapman is an attorney specializing in labor and employment law.  His passion (aside from playing tournament poker and rooting for his beloved New York Mets) is writing fiction. He recently completed the first five books in his Mike Stoneman Thriller series.

Kevin writes: “The process of writing crime thrillers involves hours of thinking about and talking about how to kill people. And how to get away with it. It also involves figuring out how my protagonist detectives might solve the case. But mostly it’s about planning out ingenious ways to murder people. My wife is a willing participant in this process (so she must trust me). My current book is more of a mystery, and a little bit of a tragic romance. But all the stories are about the characters. If you don’t care about them, then I’m not doing my job.”

TO CONTACT THE AUTHOR

Kevin G Chapman welcomes communication from his readers – including comments, ideas, disagreements and critiques. He can be contacted via any of the links below:

Author website: https://kevingchapman.com/

The Mike Stoneman Thriller Group on Facebook

Email him at kevin[at]kevingchapman[dot]com

He is also on Twitter (@KGChapman) and Instagram (@kevingchapman)