Mayhem in South Texas

Tony Valentine drove from Chicago toward Texas with his pregnant wife, anticipating a long life of law enforcement in his newly accepted position as a Deputy Sheriff in the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Department.  He did not know that an assassin was waiting in ambush.

The attempt to kill Valentine failed, but what appears to be an accidental highway crash with an eighteen-wheeler kills Tony’s wife and baby.

Sheriff Jackson visits Tony in a San Antonio hospital, while the injured deputy is recuperating from his injuries; the sheriff reveals his suspicions that the wreck is not an accident, but the work of the McCaskills, a sophisticated family in control of criminal activity in parts of South Texas. When Tony learns later that Sheriff Jackson had committed suicide, he vows to go undercover and to bring down the McCaskill Empire.  

Upon learning that Tony might be investigating the family, A. J. McCaskill, the head of the family, declares, "If he's in Texas, I'll pay $1,000,000 to anyone who kills Valentine. If he is still alive when Max and I return from Switzerland, hold him for me. I will cut his throat myself!"

McCaskill does not know that Tony has planted listening devices in McCaskill’s office and hears McCaskill put a price on Tony’s head. Tony responds, Okay, A. J. McCaskill, you declared war on me when you killed my wife and baby. Now, we'll see who wins this war.

With his plan in place to bring down the McCaskill clan, by moon and starlight, Tony loaded a clip in the rifle and gave the silencer an extra tightening twist. Satisfied, he balanced the gun in his right hand and the video camera in his left and walked toward the tank farm. For a few moments, Tony hesitated. I'm about to start a war with the McCaskill clan. No, that's not right. Max McCaskill started this war when he killed Samantha and my baby.

What happened during Tony’s war against the McCaskills can only be described as Mayhem in South Texas.

Since his retirement in 1991 as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Gonzales, Texas, Dr. Donald Corley has published The Unhappy Prostitute, Tychicus, The Roman Courier, Double Murder in New Orleans, The Pedophile Murders, and The Sheriff.

Reverend Corley’s retirement as an active pastor completed fifty years in the Christian ministry; he moved to Arkadelphia, Arkansas, where he writes fiction and teaches philosophy at Henderson State University, as a member of the adjunct faculty.  Dr. Corley also served as the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Arkadelphia and the First Presbyterian Church in Bastrop, Louisiana.

From 1957 and lasting twenty years, Dr. Corley directed the hospital chaplains at the Baptist Medical Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, and organized and supervised the hospital’s first clinical pastoral education program.  During those years, the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education certified Corley as a clinical pastoral educator.  He was also a Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and an Accredited Chaplain in the American Protestant Hospital Chaplain’s Association.

Corley graduated from Ouachita Baptist University and earned the Doctor of Theology Degree from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

He and Lynell married in 1945.  They are parents of three daughters, Donna (deceased), Betty, and Cindy.

Now seventy-seven, Corley stated, “I intend to write and teach so long as physical reality permits.”  His seventh novel is under development.  More information is available at http://www.donaldcorley.com