Book description
Seven lifelong friends and racing fans from their student days at the
University of Wisconsin strike it lucky at Saratoga Race Track when they
combine to win a plus million dollar Pick Six. They subsequently use
some of those profits to buy race horses, one of which, The Badger
Express, turns out to be a sensational runner, stallion, and money
maker. Seven years later, the men become targets of a professional
assassin, an ex-Navy SEAL and Iraq private security guard named Orth.
They begin dying, one by one. Jack Doyle returns to the race track,
volunteering to aid FBI agents in a search for criminals fixing races.
Doyle then becomes involved in protecting Rene Rison, the favored
daughter of the Significant Seven's leader Arnie Rison. Jack Doyle, as
always irreverent, observant, opinionated, sometimes mistaken but always
persistent, eventually manages to find answers to the questions of who
is fixing the races and who is having members of the Significant Seven
killed off. Jack Doyle returns for the fourth time to find out who's
fixing horse races and uncovers murder. Thirty years after they began
gathering to place their bets and watch the races, seven old college
buddies hit the jackpot, winning the Pick Six for million. Forming a
syndicate dubbed The Significant Seven, they invest their winnings in
horses of their own. The proceeds from their champion stallion are
divided equally; when any of them dies, the profits will be divided
among the survivors in a tontine whose ultimate beneficiary is to be a
home for retired racehorses. But all is not well at the track. Someone's
been "sponging," secretly cramming a sponge up the noses of
favored horses to slow their breathing in order to rig races. The FBI
asks Jack Doyle, ex-boxer and denizen of the racing world (Close Call,
2008, etc.), to go undercover. Meanwhile, two mercenary thugs, veterans
of the transparently veiled "Aqua Negro," are bumping off the
Significant Seven, disguising the murders as accidents. Jack spends his
time shooting the breeze with ethnic stereotypes of the underworld;
dating a pretty, plucky trainer down on her luck; and unsurprisingly
getting nowhere with the case. After the fifth member of the Significant
Seven dies, Jack finally catches on when he becomes a target himself.
Relying on process of elimination and an utterly implausible bit of
stupidity by the murderers, Jack solves both cases. Strictly for those
who play the ponies. 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.
