Book description
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. Kellmans 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. McEvoy has created a winning protagonist in Chicago
turf writer Matt O'Connor, who has an abundance of friends in mostly low
places and his finger firmly on the pulse of the national horseracing
scene. He has created an even better villain in Claude “the professor”
Bledsoe, whose cushy life as a perpetual student will come to an abrupt
end unless he can produce million before his trust fund expires in a
few months' time. No million, and it's straight to the job market at
the age of 50, sans resume, but if he can come up with that much money,
he'll inherit Grandma Bledsoe's fortune and be set for life. Bledsoe, a
brilliant if monstrously egomaniacal psychopath, hatches an ingenious
plot to amass the needed dough by betting on fixed races. The scent of
something rotten at the track attracts O'Connor, however, and soon the
writer and his girlfriend, trainer Maggie Collins, are scheduled to
share the fate of nine other racetrackers who have been sacrificed for
the greater good of Bledsoe's financial security. McEvoy, who was
himself a correspondent for the Daily Racing Form for many years, is
dead-on in his descriptions and accounts of Thoroughbred racing. He also
gives us characters we can care about and suspense enough to make the
blood race like a stakes-winning sprinter. That's all we ask of a
racetrack thriller, and McEvoy delivers. John McEvoy, former Midwest
editor and senior correspondent for Daily Racing Form, is the author of
five previously published non-fiction books on thoroughbred horse
racing, including the award-winning Great Horse Racing Mysteries. He has
also published a book of poetry. McEvoy and his wife Judy live in
Evanston, IL.
