WAGER LATE

A murder mystery explores the shady world of offshore gambling.

This fourth installment of a series finds Farrell’s main characters, part-time private investigator Eddie O’Connell and his Uncle Mike, once again caught up in horse racing, bookmaking, and the mob. Mike, a retired cop, is the owner of O’Connell’s Tavern in Chicago, where Eddie acts as bar manager. As the novel opens, Eddie’s girlfriend, Nicole Nicoletti, gets a surprise visit from Jessie Rivera, who’s part of a “power couple” in Chicago horse racing. Jessie’s partner is Sal, Nicole’s horse trainer father, who is accused of doping his steeds. He maintains he’s being framed, but nevertheless, he faces a serious suspension. The mere hint of the crime initially chills Eddie’s sympathies, since he has grown up around the racing world and hates the idea of drugging horses. “I’d heard of other trainers being suspended for juicing, and all I had to say was ‘good riddance,’ ” he thinks. “Horses had suffered, and some had died during a race.” Eddie and Nicole begin to investigate Sal’s situation, which gets much darker almost immediately when Jessie is found shot dead. Eddie, Nicole, and Mike naturally suspect Jessie’s brother, Ramon, fresh from a stint in prison for drug running for a major cartel (“A proud man,” an exercise rider describes him. “And a proud man is the worst kind of man”). The murder also draws the attention of the local mob boss Rosario Burrascano (“If you’re the mob’s gambling boss and a murder occurs at the last race track in town,” Mike says, “you get a handle on it”). The heroes are soon neck-deep in a complex web of conflicting motives.

As in the previous volumes in this thriller series, Farrell once again strikes the perfect pace for this tangle of narrative threads. He dispenses with the usual exposition baggage that dogs later books in an ongoing series by gradually and subtly working background and context into the dialogue, which makes up by far the largest part of the novel. Readers see everything through Eddie’s eyes, and since he’s once again the least developed of the story’s characters, the effect is very close to impersonal narration. He’s convincingly emotional about the turmoil Nicole is going through, and when the strain of her father’s scandal and Jessie’s murder starts to fray the edges of her relationship with Eddie, the interpersonal stuff feels real. Farrell is adept at continuously complicating his narrative without leaving his readers behind; it’s a good bet that even newcomers to the series could start with this volume and get along just fine. And as usual, Mike steals the show, always both the voice of experience and the fountain of rough humor. “Uncle Mike had worked murder cases that could pull the heartstrings to the breaking point, yet he was still able to maintain his sense of humor,” Eddie marvels at one point. “His skin was thicker than cowhide.” The heroes’ bleak sentiments fill the gripping book’s darker second half. “We lived in a world where fentanyl could be cooked up in a kitchen in Mexico by first year chemistry students,” Eddie thinks at one point. “Chasing new drugs was like playing whack-a-mole.”

A terrific, fast-paced addition to a satisfying thriller series featuring a winning, unconventional cast.