Even though I was still living in Hunter’s Green when retired forensic psychiatrist Donald Taylor first started hosting weekly poker games at his home in the same community, I don’t believe I had ever met “Don.”
But, when he contacted me by email a few weeks ago, asking about Neighborhood News advertising rates, I responded as I always do — asking him about the nature of the business he was trying to promote and whether he was interested in New Tampa, Wesley Chapel or both of our markets.
When he said that he was looking to promote his first-ever self-published novel — entitled The Poker Night Murders — I was intrigued. I told him, as I have many authors before, that if he would send me a copy of the book, I’d take a look at it and possibly write something to try to help him sell more copies.
We ended up speaking on the phone at length about the book, which is based both on Don’s weekly poker nights at his home and fictional accounts of murder cases, none of which, he says, were based on actual murderers he was called on to interview and testify about their mental states by either the courts or the attorneys involved in the cases.
Now, although I’ve done precious little reading for pleasure since I started editing thousands of pages every year for my publications nearly 30 years ago, and never really was too big on murder mysteries as a reading genre, I agreed to at least read the first chapter or chapters to get a feel for the book.
The fact that Jannah and I currently really enjoy the Steve Martin-Martin Short-Selena Gomez Hulu series “Only Murders in the Building” definitely made me even more interested in the book’s subject material.
And no, I do not regret my decision to read it…at all.
Poker, Murder & New Tampa
One of the things that appealed to me immediately about the book was its length — only 125 pages. The murders themselves take place over only four consecutive Thursdays, with each poker night played out in a single chapter of this four-chapter book.
The reason is not only due to my attention span, but also because I knew that even if I didn’t love the book, I could get through it in just a few sittings without it affecting my deadline schedule.
The second thing that immediately appealed to me was how Don — who goes by the pen name “D.R. Taylor” in his novel — would weave actual No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em poker hands (with graphic illustrations showing the cards as they are played) and the various players’ reactions to how other players played those hands into the story.
Although I love to play poker, I have always kind of hated Hold ‘Em because I tend to, especially in lower stakes games, stay in as often as possible to see the “flop” cards, just as the character in the book named Cody, who is known to all of the other players as the worst player in the game, usually does, almost all of the time to his detriment.
In the book, “D.R.” says his fictional players decided at some point during the weekly high-stakes ($1,000 buy-in; more on this below) game at the home of the character based on him — retired forensic psychiatrist Dr. Ronald Turner — to only play Hold ‘Em “after the televised poker boom began in 2003.” Don admits that “the stakes and the implied incomes of the players have been magnified for dramatic effect,” noting that he “thought readers would be more interested in a game where people won or lost $2,000, rather than $37.” Don also goes into detail about not only the rules (for the uninitiated readers) but also the intricacies of Hold ‘Em, which made me realize even more why I never really won playing it.
But, what really hooked me were all of the New Tampa and Tampa references — Ciccio Cali, Acropolis, USF, the Lightning, Bruce B. Downs Blvd., South Tampa, the Seminole Hard Rock Casino and even a local female TV anchor who never got promoted because of Kelly Ring. I don’t know if these references will be lost on readers outside of our area, but it definitely made the book more fun for me.
As for the murders themselves, I’ll admit that I focused on only two of the many major characters from the very beginning (and one of those two did actually “do it”), but Don did such a great job of making you doubt your sleuthing skills that right up until the “Fourth Thursday” (final) chapter, I wasn’t sure whodunit.
And, while I would guess that The Poker Night Murders skews more towards a male audience because of the amount of poker included in the story and the lack of much in the way of sexual overtones, the book was definitely a page-turner for me. Rather than my anticipated “few sittings,” I devoured the book in just two.
I congratulate Don, his editor Kathleen Strattan and his illustrator and book designer John Reinhardt on a job well done. Will there be a sequel? “let’s see how this one sells,” Don says. “But, you never know.”
Spoken like a true mystery writer.
Donald Taylor’s The Poker Night Murders is available online (only) on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble for just $14.95 per copy. It’s not currently available in stores, but, as Don says, “We’ll see about it in the future.”