Flamingo Road

February 6, 2017
While perhaps not in the winner’s circle, this horse-racing series launch from Hill (Full Mortality) earns at least a show. The powers that be encourage Baltimore cop Fia McKee to become an agent with the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau after a shooting leaves her in hot water with internal affairs. Meanwhile, Fia’s brother, Patrick, whose wife has left him, needs her help with his troubled 15-year-old daughter, Jilly, who’s scared of a horse-butchering ring active near their home in Broward County, Fla. Fortunately, the TRPB wants Fia undercover at the nearby Gulfstream Park racetrack investigating what appears to be an unknown performance-enhancing drug, so she’s able to pursue the two different cases simultaneously. Hill skirts some clichés, with Fia checking off boxes for beautiful, headstrong, and tough as nails, while Jilly plays the bratty and horse-obsessed teen. Still, she does a good job developing the horse-racing background, as well as depicting the criminals who populate the C-Nine Basin (aka the Wild West of Florida). Agent: Ann Collette, Helen Rees Literary Agency.

January 15, 2017
The dark and dirty underbelly of horse racing is exposed when a Baltimore cop goes to visit relatives in Florida.Internal Affairs has been very interested in Fia McKee ever since she shot and killed the man who was choking Shyra Darnell, a hot walker at Pimlico who's so afraid of someone that she refuses to answer any questions. When Fia's beloved father, a racehorse trainer, was murdered five years earlier, Fia joined the police and has never given up on his case, which has now turned very cold. Put on leave, she answers a call for help from her brother, Patrick, whose wife has walked out and left him with a horse-crazy teen. Someone's been slaughtering people's horses for meat, and when Cody, her niece Jilly's gelding, becomes a victim, Fia gets mad and plots to get even. The night of the gelding's death, she meets a man named Zanin who runs the Protect the Animals League and is trying to stop the carnage. Zanin is sure the guilty party is a Cuban-American who lives in the dangerous and lawless area known as the C-Nine Basin, but no one's been able to prove that he's involved. Meantime, Fia learns that her problems back home may go away if she agrees to go undercover for the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau at Florida's Gulfstream Park, where horses that shouldn't be winning are suddenly showing amazing talent. Fia eases into a job as an exercise rider for an honest trainer while trying to discover what new, so far undetectable, drug is turning ordinary horses into superstars. Hill (Racing from Evil, 2016, etc.) boasts a knowledge of horses and the very real problems in horse racing that fill this sound mystery with thrills and hair-raising action from first to last.

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March 1, 2017
Still channeling her energies into her work following her father's murder, Baltimore cop Fia McKee finds herself forced to accept an offer she can't refuse. She either takes an undercover job for the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau or she risks being brought up on charges of excessive force during a fatal shooting. Fia returns to the world of horse racing in which she was raised, and working at Florida's Gulfstream Park puts her closer to her divorced brother and his troubled teenage daughter, whose horse was recently killed. Zanin, a sexy, ex-military animal-rights activist, suspects some serious bad guysthe discovery of pens of feral pigs that devour victims' bodies pretty much seals that deal. Meanwhile, Fia pulls out all the undercover stops trying to figure out how a series of long shots from the same stable keep winning high-stakes races. This series debut will appeal to fans of strong female protagonists, Florida noir, and all things horse racing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)