Water Grave by Mitchell S. Karnes February 2-28, 2025 Virtual Book Tour!

DETECTIVE ABBEY RHODES

When a young pastor is found dead at the bottom of his baptistery, detective Abbey Rhodes must search in the one place she swore never to return…the church.

Fledgling Homicide detective Abbey Rhodes investigates the murder of a young East Nashville pastor found dead in the bottom of his own church baptistery. Paired with Sam Tidwell, an apathetic, aging detective just biding his time until retirement, Abbey must convince her partner the obvious suspect is not the real murderer. 

Then, she must overcome her own deep prejudice against churches and a dark secret that anchors her to a painful past. As Abbey and Sam discover the pastor’s plans to eliminate the church’s corruptive elements and implement a new vision, they realize their list of suspects multiplies and includes church leaders whom the young pastor considered friends. 

The case of the Water Grave triggers painful memories and pushes Abbey to her breaking point.

Book Details:

Genre: Christian Crime/Mystery
Published by: WordCrafts Press
Publication Date: January 29, 2025
Number of Pages: 280
ISBN: 978-1962218-69-6
Series: An Abbey Rhodes Mystery, Book 1
Book Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads | WordCrafts Press

Read an excerpt:

Chapter One

Monday, October 23, 9:15 am – Living Water Church

Mark Ripley rushed into the baptistery changing room, slammed the door, and locked the handle. He scanned the room for his phone.

A loud thud reverberated through the tiny room as the entire doorframe shook. Mark searched under the towels. Another thud accompanied by the sound of cracking wood. He found the phone and glanced down at his lock screen, a picture of his wife and two children. He held the phone to his face to unlock it. Before he could dial 911, the frame splintered, and the door swung open. Realizing there was nowhere to run, Mark turned and tried to talk through the situation.

The wooden club struck the right side of his head with such violence that Mark spun sideways and toppled into the open clothes rack, dragging several white baptismal robes down with him. His phone flew from his limp hand and bounced off the wall, sliding into the opposite corner of the eight-by-eight changing room. It rested beneath the small bench.

His attacker nudged him with his foot. A few moments passed, and he nudged him again. Mark moaned. He touched his right cheek and temple, the source of his pain, and felt the warmth of his own blood. The man watched as Mark pushed up on all fours. The pastor’s only thoughts were his phone and 911. Before he could move, the man swung the club again, landing a solid blow to Mark’s back. The young pastor collapsed like a pile of soaking wet towels.

 

Chapter Two

Tuesday, October 24, 9:41 am – Living Water Church

Sergeant McNally’s assignment of Detective Tidwell as my mentor frustrated me to no end. A detective who, like water, took the path of least resistance.

He snapped his fingers in front of my face, “Hey Rhodes, which way?”

“Sorry, Detective. It’s just past Riverside at the bottom of the hill.”

“What did I say about formalities? Save that for the brass. Just call me Tidwell or Sam.”

“Yes, Detective.” It came out before I could catch it.

“It’s bad enough you look like a little girl; don’t act like one.”

I hate when they do that! Ironic. When I was twelve, everyone thought I was older and treated me as such. Now at twenty-four, I looked like an overdeveloped twelve-year-old.

Detective Tidwell loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. He stroked the salt and pepper beard which gave him a distinguished look and glanced down the road. He had a deep sorrow that added ten years to his appearance. I suppose we were a chronological paradox. “Church murder…that’s bad luck.”

“What do you mean?” Maybe he had a bad experience too.

“Nothing good ever comes from it,” he said.

I caught sight of the steeple and rubbed a sudden chill from my arms. I hated churches and church people.

It was a traditional small church building in the shape of an L with a one-story sanctuary connected to the two-story educational wing at the base of the L, just like so many small churches I’d seen as a kid.

When we pulled into the driveway, Detective Tidwell said, “Remember, just follow my lead. You got something to say, say it; otherwise, just observe.” As soon as he got out of the car, he straightened his tie and buttoned the first button of his suit coat. “If it’s too much, Rhodes, get some air.” He walked through the front doors and let them shut behind him.

I wanted to say, “This wasn’t my first homicide, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be my last,” but nothing came out. I stood there staring at the closed wooden double doors.

As I entered the tiny four-foot-deep foyer of the small church, my partner made the introductions, saying, “Detectives Tidwell and Rhodes.” I stared through the open double doors of the tiny foyer, fixated on the wooden cross on the far wall at the opposite end of the sanctuary. A Metro officer greeted us and printed our names and titles in the crime scene logbook.

He directed us to Officer Lee, the lead officer, who extended his hand to Detective Tidwell. Tidwell shook his hand then ducked under the crime scene tape dividing the foyer from the sanctuary. He glanced around the fifty-by-one-hundred-foot box of a room and walked down the center aisle. Officer Lee brought him up to speed.

I listened from the foyer as he recited the particulars of the crime scene from his memory and notes. He pointed to the baptistery which was situated behind a wall on the sanctuary stage and could be seen through an arched open space that began about chest high and ended two feet from the twenty-foot-high ceiling. Detective Tidwell walked across the hardwood-floored stage and stopped halfway between the pulpit and the baptistery window. He turned and listened to the rest of Officer Lee’s report. “Officers Hernandez and Smith are mapping out the crime scene and taking photos. Officer Grant has the church leaders spread out in the fellowship hall. CSI is on the way.” He pointed to the baptistery. “Our vic’s at the bottom.”

I stood frozen at the entrance of the sanctuary. My eyes locked on the wooden cross hung at the back wall of the baptistery, powerless to turn away. I stood there like an idiot, holding the crime tape in my hands. The officer behind me asked, “Hey, Rhodes, How’s the new gig?”

“Still learning where I fit in,” I muttered. “For now, I’m just the shadow.” I pointed to Detective Tidwell. “He’s the lead.”

The moment I said it, Detective Tidwell turned and said, “Hey, Rhodes, can we move on, or would you rather stay there and socialize?”

I rolled my eyes as I ducked under the tape. As I forced myself down the center aisle, I counted thirteen rows of pews. The décor was a mix of old and new. New ceiling, but old fixtures. Stained glass windows on the side walls, each depicting a scene from Jesus’s life, with a can light pointed at each one. A modest stage with drums, keyboard, guitars, and a baby grand in the opposite corner. Classic baptistery in the center behind the pulpit…a clear, acrylic pulpit. Nice.

Detective Tidwell stepped up to the fourteen-inch-tall baptistery glass set in the bottom of the window. He looked down into the water. “That’s something you don’t see every day.”

At five-six, I had to stand on my tiptoes to see over the glass window that allowed a view from the pews. I could hear the pump churning and noticed a slight movement in the water’s surface. A man’s body lay at the bottom, traces of a dark fluid seeping from the vic’s mouth and nose. The body was already releasing liquids as it decomposed. “Do we know who he is?” I asked.

“The pastor, Mark Ripley. Thirty-three-year-old white male, married, father of two.”

Detective Tidwell stared at the body. “Family been notified?”

“Not yet.” Officer Lee flipped through his notes. “According to Faith Jones, the church secretary, the pastor’s wife and kids are on their way back from St. Louis.”

“Any witnesses?” Detective Tidwell asked.

“No, but the church leaders all have theories as to his death. He was discovered when they arrived for their Tuesday morning leadership meeting.”

“How many leaders?” Detective Tidwell asked.

Officer Lee looked through his notes. “Twelve.”

“That explains all the vehicles,” I said. “Who called it in?”

“Owen Jenkins, the Men’s Ministry leader.” Lee led us out of the sanctuary to a small hallway at the side of the stage that led to the main hall of the educational building. From there we turned left to the doors of the changing rooms, one for men, and one for women. The door to the women’s side was cracked, and the frame shattered.

I scanned the room before entering. Something didn’t fit. “Why are the stairs and floor wet? The body’s been there at least a day.”

“According to Owen Jenkins, he saw the body and ran back to the church office to call 911. While he was doing that, the secretary and youth minister entered the church through the sanctuary doors. Noticing the baptistery light on, the secretary went up on the stage to turn it off. That’s when she saw the body and screamed. The youth minister took it upon himself to check the body, believing the pastor was still alive. Owen Jenkins heard the commotion, came back to the sanctuary. As soon as he noticed the youth minister in the water, he yelled for him to get out.” Officer Lee closed his notebook. “We taped it off the moment we arrived.”

“What an idiot!” Detective Tidwell snapped.

The officer smiled faintly and read another note. “The youth minister’s name is Jonathan Williams.”

Detective Tidwell pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re telling me a well-intentioned staff member compromised our crime scene?” Tidwell didn’t like complications. They took more time.

I recorded detailed notes in my book. “I’m sure prints won’t help anyway. A church this size probably doesn’t clean back here often.” Turning to Officer Lee, I asked, “Did someone take pictures anyway?” Officer Lee nodded. “What about a sketched diagram with measurements?” He nodded again. Standard procedure. These were officers of East Precinct. They were trained well.

“Officers Hernandez and Smith will get those down to Homicide as soon as they’re finished.”

“Smell that? Bleach.” I looked at the remains of the door and frame where someone had broken through. “Looks like someone tried to clean up.” After donning sanitary booties and Nitrile gloves, we entered the crime scene, doing our best to preserve the integrity of the remaining evidence. I knelt by the stairs and pointed to a seam where the vinyl flooring met the rubber treads of the steps leading up to the baptistery. “There’s blood here.”

Detective Tidwell knelt beside me. “Here too. Look in the grooves of the stairs.”

“Sloppy job. Must have been in a hurry.”

Detective Tidwell turned to Officer Lee. “Could you see if there’s a janitor’s closet somewhere? If so, look for a looped-end string mop. If so, bag it. We’ll have the lab check it for blood and prints on the handle.”

“More here,” I announced, holding out a white robe with spots of blood on the sleeve. “Do we have any Luminal so we can check the whole room?”

Detective Tidwell said, “CSI will.” He called out for Officer Smith to take photos of the blood stains.

Detective Tidwell’s phone rang. He answered it and listened. He lowered the phone from his ear and said, “CSI is pulling in now. If you don’t mind, have them spray the room and light it up.”

“Will do, Detective. Anything else?”

“If you have anyone to spare, I’d like to have them canvass the immediate neighborhood to see if anyone saw cars coming or going between their last church service and this morning.”

Detective Tidwell sighed and asked, “Now, where are those witnesses?”

***

Excerpt from Water Grave by Mitchell S. Karnes. Copyright 2025 by Mitchell S. Karnes. Reproduced with permission from Mitchell S. Karnes. All rights reserved.

 

MITCHELL S. KARNES is a husband, father of seven, and grandfather of ten. Mitchell uses his experience and insights as a minister, counselor, and educator to write and speak on challenging issues and concerns with an ever-growing audience. He has published six novels, three short stories, a one-act play, and numerous Bible study lessons.

Through two separate battles against Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, God has given Mitchell a new perspective on life that challenges him to create stories to entertain audiences and call them to action. Mitchell’s mission is to reach and reconcile those disillusioned with God and His church and to inspire the church to live out the love of Christ Jesus in a broken and hurting world.

Catch Up With Mitchell S. Karnes:
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Logoharp by Arielle Emmett Blog Tour! @Bookgal @therealbookgal

 

Synopsis (from Amazon):

Named Finalist in the American Fiction Awards 2024 (category Science Fiction: Cyberpunk), The Logoharp describes the extraordinary journey of a young American journalist who chooses to work as an AI-driven propagandist—aka "Reverse Journalist" who foresees and reports the future for 22nd century China.

Naomi is surgically transplanted, giving her extraordinary powers of foresight and physical strength. She hears voices in her Logoharp, a universal translator of all world languages, allowing her to take the pulse of global crowds, predicting and broadcasting political and social events with deadly precision.

But Naomi also hears discordant voices coming from unidentified sources. She knows only that mysterious voices sing to her of other worlds, other freedoms. When she's tasked with finding a flaw in a State system that balances births and deaths —a system devised by a Chinese architect, Naomi's lover who abandoned her in youth—she experiences "unintentional contradiction."

Suppressed emotions resurface, compelling her to rebel. Her decision has unexpected consequences for the men and women she loves, for her own body, and for the global societies she's vowed to protect.

Arielle Emmett, Ph.D., is a writer, visual journalist and traveling scholar specializing in East Asia, science writing and human interest. She has been a Contributing Editor to Smithsonian Air & Space magazine and a Fulbright Scholar and Specialist in Kenya (2018-2019) and Indonesia (2015).

Her work has appeared in Mother Jones, The Scientist, Ms., Parents, Saturday Review, Boston Globe, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Detroit Free Press, Los Angeles Times Book Review and Globe & Mail (Canada), among others.  

Arielle has taught at the International College Beijing, University of Hong Kong Media Studies Centre, Universitas Padjadjaran (West Java, Indonesia) and Strathmore University Law School (Nairobi). Her first science fiction novel, The Logoharp, about China and America a century from now, is part of a planned series on dystopian paths to utopian justice.

Website

https://leapingtigerpress.com/

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560368953572

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https://www.instagram.com/arielle.emmett

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Amazon

https://tinyurl.com/thelogoharp

Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216676221-the-logoharp

Praise:

"In Arielle Emmett's fevered imaginings one great and ancient state is able to dominate the rest using an unbeatable secret weapon. Logoharps. Creatures able to see into the future, ensuring the state is always a step ahead. That is, until one rebels. Imagine Mona Lisa Overdrive meshed with The Wind-Up Girl. That's the kind of sci-fi ride you're in for with The Logoharp."

– Kevin Sites, author of The Ocean Above Me

"The Logoharp offers a thought-provoking experience for those willing to confront unsettling truths. Some may find comfort in the familiar illusions of their own "Matrix," while others may feel a revolutionary spark ignited within them. Ultimately, this novel serves as a mirror, reflecting each reader's willingness to either accept the status quo or challenge it."

– Literary Titan

“A hugely ambitious vision of a time in which America is a Chinese colony, almost anyone over 50 is sent off to die in a cozy ice-sled, and journalists are tasked with chronicling a future which then comes to pass.  If you're fascinated by technology and by glimpses of where we'll be a hundred years from now, look to a new hero, Naomi.  She's the half-human cyborg reporter who believes in truth, foresees the future and, in desperation, rebels against it."

–Beverly Gray (Executive Board Member, ASJA)

"In the world of The Logoharp, there is no security, not even an objective reality, only the reality created by journalism in reverse. Emmett's' novel creates a troubling vision of media that borders on propaganda in an AI-filled future."

—Hamilton Bean, Ph.D., author of No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of US Intelligence (Praeger).

"Prepare to be swept away by an imperfect yet wildly relatable heroine. This ancient, futuristic world will make you angry, frustrated, hopeful, in love, and inspire an uprising within."

—Grace Diida, L.L.M., Venture Capital Research

"Loved The Logoharp! It's genuinely original, disturbing in a provocative way, occasionally funny and erotic, creative and well-paced — and I can't get those ice sleighs out of my head! Naomi is one strange —and beguiling—heroine."

—Laura Berman, feature writer, retired columnist, The Detroit News.

Excerpt

The Null Hypothesis of Love 

爱
的
零
假
设

I’m speaking into my nanorecorder that tokenizes dictation into 104 human languages. At any time I can decode my entries to enhance supplemental knowledge. My recorded notes give me access to a tokenized (quintillion) AI database of political events and crowd reactions, the foundation of my training as a multi-channel linguist and scribe. 

I’ve been accepted as a candidate for Reverse Journalism (RJ). An RJ researches, extracts and reports the most likely scenarios of the future that will benefit Mother Country, its “children” (the masses) and, at times, the Ameriguan subsidiaries.

Of course, I have to jump through lots of academic hoops to advance beyond the lowest RJ internship tier. Ultimately, I have to understand and speak all 104 languages fluently. In a few weeks I’m headed to Taiwan for further training.

Though I’ve heard from Marco only occasionally in these past years, his face still appears in the mirror. Summers, especially, I see a pale oval reflection of his face against mine.

In winters, I still see a cloaked amateur wearing a knitted cap as he dives down the Breckenridge ski slopes. In each season, I long for its opposite—summer changing to winter’s cold, winter into summer’s heat, spring into fall, fall into spring. Why is that? I can never be satisfied with just what is. 

The Logoharp’s life and its reception of signals and spirits takes precedence now. To increase exponentially my quotient of understanding, of empathy for all others, one of my graduate research projects is to map out and publish a Null Hypothesis of Love, a theory based partially on the writings of D.H. Lawrence and Carson McCullers, both of whom wrote about the dichotomies of feeling between lovers and beloveds. Self-modifying this theory to account for cross-cultural and gender-robotic transformations in our times, I aim to post my theory on social media if the academic journals won’t accept it. Internalizing this null hypothesis as I undergo transition to human-cyborg status, I’d like to reshape our social skin.  

Deliberately, willingly, I’ve decided to pursue this career instead of medicine. The title, Reverse Journalist, sounds glorious and backward, like a Reverse Engineer. RJs deconstruct reality and remake it in pleasurable form. We’re not like conventional journalists who haplessly report and announce random social and political events of yesterday or today. Instead, we seek the truth of probable outcomes, scripting events to glorify and sustain the health of the Party and its constituents.

RJs extrapolate the future based on algorithms enabling us to analyze millions of social scenarios from a Database of Crowds—a repository of historical events, survey data, political messages and crowd responses to them. Extracting the most likely scenario given a particular convergence of prior events, we ensure the events happen as we prescribe them—that is, if all the social conditions and political strategies of our bosses/leaders are properly aligned. 

In Ameriguo, the subsidiary Directorate has already given me permission to begin physical preparation for the Logoharp, my universal translator. This is an essential tool of Reverse Journalists, but only the ones elevated to the highest levels get the full installation. My first surgeries will entail implants of programmable logic from The Laws of Ice and Critique of the Frontier, two Chinese classics about the fate of modern civilization. The logic incorporates Mother Country’s specific instruction set to remake and spread harmony across our societies and a small group of planets outside our solar system preparing for colonization.

*

I realize I’m immature and need rigorous training. Yet my superiors understand I have a gift, sensing what might happen for better or worse to a politician or a scientist or a whole country before the experts do. As an example, at age 15, I started a Citizen Live! nanoblog, forecasting the outcome of the 2104 Taiwanese elections. I predicted Falun Gong’s doom in Taiwan; the Independence Green party would lose badly again to the Blue Party’s Kuomintang loyalists swearing allegiance to Zu Guo (祖国), our Mother Country. I foresaw the downfall of decarbonization on both sides of the Pacific in favor of those who would chop down and bury our trees, claiming the carbon release was actually less than wildfire burning. And now we have the Domers, those who argue that fossil fuel exudate can be scrubbed and recycled to the upper troposphere without raising planetary temperature. It doesn’t work. 

The Directorate never applies the terms “propaganda” or “disinformation” to describe RJ’s work, which always contains grains of future truth. Not for a minute has it occurred to me to question either the Directorate in Ameriguo or the training institutes I’ll attend in Taiwan. The whole world demands my focus far more urgently than any selfish ambitions or plays for romance. I’ve wanted, most of all, to produce contentment and insight among the multiple publics who read or listen to my Citizen Live! nanoblogs. With the Logoharp, I’ll foresee, broadcast and monitor the laughter, sufferings and unselfish sacrifices to our State of millions. (I don’t think my parents would approve. Perhaps I do need to get away from them.)

*

My father disappeared about a year ago off the coast of Japan. Most likely, he was in search of a cure for his blood disease. No letters or video messages, either, though periodically I try to locate him, tracking available surveillance videos from drones skirting Mount Yotei adjoining Sapporo. On one of these videos, I watched a man bulked up in ski gear trying to snowshoe down and up a U-shaped hanging glacier. Dad loved unspoiled nature, and I’m guessing he must be settled in Hokkaido. I keep hoping to catch a glimpse of his bear-like body, his hairy chest, a mop of black springy hair that would distinguish him from native Japanese. He has a wide-legged shuffle, wearing down the outer heels of his shoes as though he’s Charlie Chaplin. But so far, I can’t locate him.

Marco’s absence is clearer to me. In the middle of the night, on occasion, when I don’t block out my thoughts, I’ll wake up, believing my lover is rapping on my door. The thermostat inside my body goes haywire as I think of him and the days grow hotter and hotter. With multiple surgeries planned as a State-appointed RJ, of course I’ll remember less and less. Ablation will reduce the normal seven trillion nerve endings in my human body to half that number. I won’t have normal emotions. Transformation to cyborg status will satisfy the Singing Directorate and provide relief for me. With the exception of a rare stinging in my right temple from Logoharp overload, or a pounding in my chest during combat or media assaults, I’ll feel little, if any, conventional human pain.

Damn Good Things by Peter Andersen Blog Tour!! X: @Bookgal Instagram: @therealbookgal

 Synopsis (from Amazon):

This is a book about being alive. The stories are real and reflect moments when we feel fully alive—but perhaps are not aware of it, unable to take time to appreciate or recognize these unexpected gifts. I call them Damn Good Things, and they’re easy to see once you know how. When you do, you might just improve your day, learn something about yourself, and even change your life.

The Origin of Damn Good Things

My book Damn Good Things was inspired by a rollercoaster ride I took with my Dad. The funny thing is, after it happened, I completely forgot about it for 20 years!

I was 21 and heading to London to be an assistant teacher in a writing program there. My Dad’s a professor and he was on sabbatical in Copenhagen, so I stopped to see him on the way. My Mom was there too, but she was out of town at the time. 

Summer in Copenhagen is absolutely beautiful. My Dad and I walked all over the city, talking about this and that. Somehow we wound up at Tivoli Gardens, the grand old amusement park, and somehow we wound up going on the rollercoaster. It was a fun visit, and we had a good couple of days together. 

After that, I went on to London and taught and got on with my life. 

Twenty years later – now married with children and moving into our second home – I was going through some boxes and I found an old journal. I sat down and started reading through it, and there was this entry about Tivoli! By this time I’d completely forgotten about it, but here was this great entry about Dad and me going on this enormous rollercoaster, and how we did all those rollercoaster things – shouting and laughing and waving our arms as the roller coaster climbed high hills and then roared down them and thundered around turns with everyone screaming and having fun. 

The last line of that entry was, “What a damn good thing for me and my Dad to do!”

It was so fun to find that, even more so because I still had no memory of it. But I loved that phrase “damn good things” and I started wondering what makes a good thing into a damn good thing. I eventually hit on the idea that there are certain moments in life – very brief moments – when we feel completely alive, and that’s what was going on with the rollercoaster ride. I liked that idea, so I started looking for more of these, and eventually collected a bunch of them into this book, Damn Good Things. 

It's funny to think that journal was sitting in a dusty box somewhere for 20 years, like it was waiting to be found. And I’m so grateful I finally found it!

Peter Andersen has been writing since he was a kid. In his professional life he’s worked as a journalist, writing teacher, newspaper editor, manager, freelancer, and technical writer. He spent 30 years producing technical documentation at Microsoft and other software companies. These days, in addition to writing about Damn Good Things, he conducts life story interviews with the residents of a local retirement community.

The idea for Damn Good Things came about when he found an old diary entry about a rollercoaster ride he once took with his father. The entry described how fully alive they both felt in that moment, and ended with the words, “What a damn good thing for me and my dad to do!”

Inspired by that diary entry, he began to research and write about the moments when we feel completely alive. He soon realized that this is what he’d been writing about his whole life. This is truly the lens through which he sees the world. Whether it’s an aging, half-blind pug tearing across a wood floor to get to her dinner, the distant whistle of an approaching train in the night, or a memory-filled relic from a childhood home – he’ll show you how all of these are Damn Good Things.

Website:

https://peterandersen-author.com/

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Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222083322-damn-good-thing