'Deadly Lullaby:' Louisville lawyer's crime fiction baby released

LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - A life spent understanding the law has helped create characters who break it.

"Deadly Lullaby" is the new crime fiction eBook just released by Penguin Random House and it's penned by a Louisville lawyer.

A present-day, crime-fiction thriller, "Deadly Lullaby" comes from the legal mind of Louisville native Robert McClure.

"A lot of people are going to see it and  hopefully love it, " McClure said. A couple clicks of a mouse and we see they already are. Many reader reviews on several sites give four stars to McClure's work. That's a big relief for the Manual High grad because "Deadly Lullaby" is his baby. McClure is a familiar face to many in legal circles --  a staff attorney for Judges Ann Bailey Smith and Fred Cowan.  He also worked for Federal Judge Ed Johnstone.

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The Murray State criminology major started building characters when he was a boy.

"I grew up right across the street from Churchill Downs," he said. "My father was a gunsmith. He had a shop in our garage and later he moved the shop
to 7th Street Road, which is notorious in its own right, back in those days." The stories got better as the Manual track athlete and football player matured.

"I worked in dad's shop and cops came in all the time and shady people came in, too," he said.

"Deadly Lullaby" finds a career hitman leaving prison, attempting to reunite with his estranged son who's a police detective. Wondering if the father and son drama wrapped inside a murder mystery is set locally?

"Louisville is just too nice a town," McClure said. "A lot goes on in (Los Angeles) that doesn't go on in Louisville and that's why I picked it."

Los Angeles is not only the book's setting; it's also where McClure and wife Kathie McDonald-McClure -- a partner at Wyatt, Tarrant and Combs -- spend a lot of time for both fun and business. Returning from a 2014 vacation, she read her husband's  manuscript.

"The entire way home, I couldn't believe I was sitting beside the person who wrote and created those characters," she said. "I stayed up to 3 a.m. to finish it because I could not put it down." The same was true for a New York literary agent, and a Hollywood agent who sold "Deadly Lullaby" as an option to Sony Pictures.

"Having great representation means a lot," McClure said. "But the book has to be good."

While McClure has had many short stories published over the years, this is his first novel. It's also being published in France. You can get the e-book on sites like Amazon.

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