Photo Finish

April 23, 2012
Near the start of McEvoy’s solid fifth Jack Doyle mystery (after 2010’s The Significant Seven), an Irish friend persuades Doyle, who’s “between assignments,” to become the agent for Mickey Sheehan, an Irish jockey soon to arrive in Chicago, who’s “ust a bit over the age of seventeen, but greatly talented.” When Doyle meets Mickey at O’Hare, he’s surprised to discover his client is a girl. The doping of horses, possibly connected with veterinarian Eric Allgauer, who lost his job with a trainer Doyle works with on account of his drinking, complicates Mickey’s rise in the American horse-racing world. Allgauer may also bear a grudge against his former colleague, Ingrid McGuire, who supposedly can read horses’ minds. While the plot flows less smoothly than in previous entries, the author, a former Midwest editor and senior correspondent for Daily Racing Form, writes convincingly about the turf.