Strictly for those who play the ponies.
Jack Doyle returns for the fourth time to find out who’s fixing horse races and uncovers murder.
Thirty years after they began gathering to place their bets and watch the races, seven old college buddies hit the jackpot, winning the Pick Six for $1 million. Forming a syndicate dubbed The Significant Seven, they invest their winnings in horses of their own. The proceeds from their champion stallion are divided equally; when any of them dies, the profits will be divided among the survivors in a tontine whose ultimate beneficiary is to be a home for retired racehorses. But all is not well at the track. Someone’s been “sponging,” secretly cramming a sponge up the noses of favored horses to slow their breathing in order to rig races. The FBI asks Jack Doyle, ex-boxer and denizen of the racing world (Close Call, 2008, etc.), to go undercover. Meanwhile, two mercenary thugs, veterans of the transparently veiled “Aqua Negro,” are bumping off the Significant Seven, disguising the murders as accidents. Jack spends his time shooting the breeze with ethnic stereotypes of the underworld; dating a pretty, plucky trainer down on her luck; and unsurprisingly getting nowhere with the case. After the fifth member of the Significant Seven dies, Jack finally catches on when he becomes a target himself. Relying on process of elimination and an utterly implausible bit of stupidity by the murderers, Jack solves both cases.
Strictly for those who play the ponies.Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59058-705-8
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the...
Just when you thought you’d seen a detective in every guise imaginable, here comes one in sheep’s clothing.
For years, George Glenn hasn’t been close to anyone but his sheep. Everyday he lets them out, pastures them, reads to them and brings them safely back home to his barn in the guilelessly named Irish village of Glennkill. Now George lies dead, pinned to the ground by a spade. Although his flock haven’t had much experience with this sort of thing, they’re determined to bring his killer to justice. There are of course several obstacles, and debut novelist Swann deals with them in appealingly matter-of-fact terms. Sheep can’t talk to people; they can only listen in on conversations between George’s widow Kate and Bible-basher Beth Jameson. Not even the smartest of them, Othello, Miss Maple (!) and Mopple the Whale, can understand much of what the neighborhood priest is talking about, except that his name is evidently God. They’re afraid to confront suspects like butcher Abraham Rackham and Gabriel O’Rourke, the Gaelic-speaking charmer who’s raising a flock for slaughter. And even after a series of providential discoveries and brainwaves reveals the answer to the riddle, they don’t know how to tell the Glennkill citizenry.
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the sheep. But the sustained tone of straight-faced wonderment is magical.Pub Date: June 5, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-52111-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Flying Dolphin/Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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