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John McEvoy

"McEvoy deftly manages his busy plot while liberally spicing it with intriguing racing stories."—Publishers Weekly

Irreverent Jack Doyle has worn many hats, one or two blown off by his irrepressible temper. A former boxer, advertising rep, and publicity man, Jack's midlife career has been shaped by the world of thoroughbred horse racing and dark deeds therein. So it's no surprise when two FBI agents he's sleuthed with before pressure him to identify an animal activist who is carrying out "mercy killings" of retired race horses donated to Midwestern university veterinary schools. Plus two Chicago senior citizens are being threatened by an imperious Internet millionaire intent on owning their beloved horse. Then a call comes from Ireland where the life of Jack's friend Niall Hanratty, the noted bookmaker, is under attack from an unknown enemy. Meanwhile Doyle's nemesis Harvey Rexroth, the rapacious media mogul Jack helped put into federal prison, enlists a fellow inmate, a Mobconnected attorney, to have Jack killed. Carrying out this contract will be W. D. Wiems, a brilliant, frighteningly warped University of Kansas student who has eagerly launched a career of murder for hire. Fast tracking, Jack visits vet schools while juggling pieces of investigations near home and traveling twice to Ireland where his quest to find Hanratty's enemy takes him to Kinsale, Connemara, and a Dublin slum. Meanwhile the vicious contract killer is, all unknown, tracking Jack…

Poisoned Pen Press

Jack Doyle Series

High Stakes

No one really notices that a fix may be in until Matt O'Connor, a Chicago-based columnist for a national racing newspaper, gets a call from Moe Kellman, a horse-owning acquaintance. Kellman's question for Matt: Was the death of ninety-two-year-old Bernard Glockner, Chicago's oldest active bookmaker, suicide or murder? Glockner was Kellman's late uncle and Kellman—a man not unfamiliar with the Chicago mob, wants Matt to check it out.

Matt quickly comes to believe that the fate of the bookie is tied to a series of races whose outcomes have been manipulated. His quest is aided by horse trainer Maggie Collins and Dave Zimmer, a professional gambler known as "The Fount" for his reputation as an encyclopedic source of information. Eventually, going as far afield as Las Vegas and Madison, Wisconsin, they fix their sights on a brilliant sociopath. But why would this psycho have plotted a race-fixing scheme?

Spiced with the kind of lively language that marked Blind Switch, the author's debut novel (2004), Riders Down offers striking insights into the world of horse racing and the possibilities of its corruption.

Tom Weiner

Blackstone Publishing

Riders Down

Irreverent Chicago racetrack publicist Jack Doyle, former advertising man and amateur boxer, accepts a new job as a thoroughbred jockey's agent. His client is a seventeen-year-old riding phenom from Ireland named Mickey Sheehan. Mickey and Jack prove to be an effective team until someone begins secretly doping the horses, affecting race results.

In his quest to identify the culprit, Doyle is aided by his old friend Moe Kellman, furrier-to-the-Mob; trainer Ralph Tenuta, himself the target of a blackmailer; and young veterinarian Ingrid McGuire, a talented horse communicator. The action moves from Chicago's Heartland Downs to New York's famed Saratoga Race Course, even stepping aboard Mob capo Fifi Bonadio's lavish yacht in Chicago's Belmont Harbor. Will Jack's persistent push for answers get him killed?

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