Murder at the Racetrack

February 20, 2006
Penzler's third sports-themed anthology (after Murder at the Foul Line
) is slow out of the gate but soon hits its stride. The opener, "Keller by a Nose," Lawrence Block's confused mix of stamp collecting and off-track betting, is followed by Ken Bruen's "The Return of the Thin White Dude... Screaming," a sordid tale of drugs and gambling. Things begin to get on track with Jan Burke's "Zuppa Inglese," in which intrigue surrounds the apparent suicide of a horse owner and restaurateur whose precocious son falls victim to an amateurish kidnap plot. "Yellow Mama's Long Weekend" by Lorenzo Carcaterra explores the sensitive relationship between a lovable steed and his debt-ridden trainer. Gambling addiction figures in Max Collins's taut South Side Chicago procedural "That Kind of Nag." Tension builds before the big race in Joyce Carol Oates's "Meadowlands," in which glamour-boy Fritzi Czechi sees betting on horses not as gambling but "an art." Other notable contributors include Thomas H. Cook, Michelle Martinez and Scott Wolven.

March 15, 2006
Not all of the 13 racetrack mysteries that Penzler has chosen include a murder, and a few of them scarcely include a racetrack. Each contains generous portions of deceit, double-dealing, and treachery, however, and those ingredients will entice readers who like their mysteries down and dirty. In Lorenzo Carcaterra's Runyonesque "Yellow Mama's Long Weekend," a small-time trainer with a weakness for booze and gambling double-crosses a race-fixing mobster and walks away--on unbroken legs--with the score of a lifetime. In Joyce Carol Oates' searing "Meadowlands,"" "a successful horse owner with a secret agenda takes his love-struck girlfriend to the track, where an idyllic afternoon turns suddenly and unimaginably horrific. And in Julie Smith's cleverly plotted "Hotwalker,"" "a former veterinarian whose husband's life was shattered by a hoodlum's violence exacts an ingenious revenge. Not every story is a jewel, but the big majority will fill an idle hour with delicious suspense, and a few, such as Oates' contribution, will stay with readers for a very long time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)