Book description
When millionaire jockey Willie Rich is murdered immediately after
winning the 0,000 Princess Stakes, his old friend Max Roper,
successful investigator, decides to find out who-dunit. It was set up
to look like an accidental death--Willie drowned in his own pool--but
Max didn't believe that. Fortunately for him, he is very much at home
in the environs of a race track, because the person who might have
wanted Willie dead was going to be one of the diverse people who are
the usual habitués of a track: touts, gamblers, jockeys, trainers,
rich horse owners and their wives and women, and even stableboys on
the make. Max discovers that Willie had found a diary that pointed the
finger of an earlier murder at someone who had kept right on covering
his tracks. That someone, he figures, had to be among the following
cast of characters: Ty Clayton, rich oil man, whose horses Willie
rode. A man with a passion to win and an ungovernable temper. His
wife, Monica, who had once been a magnificently beautiful movie star
and who had run through four husbands, several fortunes and part of
her looks. Was she being blackmailed? Kilburn, Willie's agent, who was
shrewd enough to get away with murder and who had been heard arguing
with Willie just before the death. Pam Clayton, Ty's daughter, who had
disappeared when Willie's body was found. Tom Hunter, recent arrival
from Acapulco, who was around the race track asking some very curious
questions and backing them up with muscle. Then, of course, there was
Penny, Willie's wife, who had liked Willie's money but very little
else about him; and Johnny Cashio, the syndicate torpedo who like
everything about Penny. And Joe Zale, who might have been jealous
enough of Willie to do him in. And there are were also the people from
Monica Clayton's past: Charnock, who dispensed psychic truths to
adoring audiences and counted Monica among his most ardent disciples.
Was he blackmailing her, or was it his secretary, Dorn? Someone, among
this fantastic cast of characters, manages to involve Max in
considerable personal jeopardy and violence before he triumphantly
brings the murderer to book.
