Just a few critical degrees hotter than tepid, and the sex is offstage. Safe thrills for the easily shocked.
A horse is hijacked and held for ransom and a reporter is hired to get to the bottom of things, as the race to supplant Dick Francis continues.
Handsome, early-’30s, bachelor Ben Copperfield (Deadfall, Mar. 2005, etc.) makes enough of a living as a freelance reporter to rent a pleasant cottage with all the mod cons, keep up a big SUV and carry on a romance with lovely live-in girlfriend Lisa, a tour guide for rich Americans. Ben’s specialty as a writer is the horse world. He was practically born on a horse. Mom and Dad, now divorced, are horse people, and half-brother Mikey seems to have a future as a jockey. One of the mysteries in this not particularly challenging turf-thriller is Ben’s borderline phobic aversion to horses. It’s a neurosis that will plague him from the moment young Mikey calls to say that he’s been innocently but alarmingly involved in the kidnapping of Cajun King, favorite for upcoming premier steeplechase event, the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The missing horse is owned by exceptionally unpleasant trainer, the nouveau riche Eddie Truman, a man with an unsavory past and a disastrously dysfunctional family. Truman hires Ben to investigate the crime while keeping it out of the news, a task that must be juggled with Ben’s earlier assignment to cover the British debut of a Hungarian equine circus whose riders he has come to admire. Flirting with Truman’s younger daughter Fliss, dodging glowers from older daughter Helen, whose husband is nearly as nasty as Truman, exchanging blows with rabid animal activists, and missing assignations with Lisa, Ben finds that his two writing assignments seem to be moving towards a merger. He further finds it necessary to confront his fears and, with the help of the Hungarians, get himself back on a horse.
Just a few critical degrees hotter than tepid, and the sex is offstage. Safe thrills for the easily shocked.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-09-180027-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Hutchinson/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
You can’t help but chuckle over all the disasters, but in the end the heroine catches her prey.
An Arizona accountant with a penchant for solving murders lands a fishy case.
Sophie "Phee" Kimball might lead a dull life if it weren’t for her mother, Harriet Plunkett, and Harriet’s neurotic Chiweenie, Streetman. As it is, Harriet lives near her daughter in Sun City West and has a wide circle of zany friends who’ve helped Phee solve several mysteries (Molded 4 Murder, 2019, etc.) while she’s been working for Williams Investigations along with her boyfriend, Marshall, a former police officer. While Phee’s visiting Harriet one day, Streetman dashes over to the neighbors’ barbecue grill and unearths a dead body under a tarp. As usual, the overwhelmed local police ask Williams Investigations to help—er, consult. Harriet’s main concern is getting costumes made for the reluctant Streetman, whom she’s entered in a series of contests starting with Halloween and progressing through Thanksgiving, Christmas/Hannukah, and St. Patrick’s Day. One of her friends is an accomplished seamstress who goes all out making gorgeous costumes that will beat an obnoxious lady who looks down on mutts. The dead man is identified as Cameron Tully, a seafood distributor, who was poisoned by the locally ubiquitous sago pine. At the first dog contest, Elaine Meschow has to be rushed to the hospital after she gets a dose of the same thing. The owner of a gourmet dog food company, Elaine is lucky enough to recover. After Streetman takes second place, Harriet’s team redoubles its efforts for the next contest while Phee and Marshall, who are moving into a new place together, continue to hunt for clues. A restaurant holdup and a scheme to use empty houses for hookups for high school kids add to the confusion.
You can’t help but chuckle over all the disasters, but in the end the heroine catches her prey.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2455-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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
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