Secretariat Reborn

August 19, 2013
Klaus crams a lot into her debut thriller, which combines thoroughbred horse breeding, mob skullduggery, and a love-crazed stalker. When hunky Christian Roberts returns to the horse farm in rural Florida where he grew up, he finds his estranged father, Hank, dying. While he still has time, Hank entrusts Chris with an illegal clone of the all-time greatest race horse, Secretariat, hoping that his son will fulfill his dreams of racing glory. Chris begins uncertainly exploring the high-stakes world of thoroughbred racing, encountering the predatory trainer Ed Price in the process, while also trying to disengage from his violently unstable girlfriend, Kate. To finance his venture, Chris must borrow cash from gangster Vince Florio, but that soon has him piloting a speedboat out into the Gulf to pick up drug shipments. All these difficulties are worked out, perhaps too neatly; the story works much better than it has a right to thanks to Klaus’s infectious love of the Florida setting, the horse-breeding milieu, and her handsome protagonist. Agent: Susan Gleason, Susan Gleason Literary Agency.

September 15, 2013
If you're willing to suspend your disbelief at the gate, this horse-racing thriller delivers a good ride. Yes, the idea of a dying trainer bequeathing his estranged son a colt bearing a striking resemblance to Secretariat, despite its seemingly undistinguished parentage, is a real stretch, but Klaus knows her horsesshe has bred and trained Thoroughbredsand she grounds her flights of fancy in the turf, making us care about both the big red horse with an outsize heart and his initially reluctant owner, Christian Roberts, a blond twentysomething with a hang-loose life renting out sailboats on Sarasota Bay. But Christian, now reconciled to his father, trades spinnakers for saddles and throws himself into the life of the track, making numerous mistakes along the way, including getting involved with an unscrupulous trainer and borrowing money from mobstersand let's not forget the old girlfriend turned stalker. There's a whole lot of plot stampeding toward the finish line here, much of it verging on the edge of preposterous, but if you just loosen your grip on the reins and let the narrative run free, you'll find yourself having a good time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)