Saratoga Backtalk (Charlie Bradshaw Series #8)

by Stephen Dobyns

Overview

Morally flexible sidekick Victor Plotz takes centre stage in the eighth mystery for everyman detective Charlie Bradshaw in Saratoga Springs.

Wealthy stable owner Bernard Logan comes to Charlie and Victor for help, believing his young wife is trying to kill him. Three days later, a horse kicks him to death.

With Charlie away, Victor throws himself into solving the case himself, finding all manner of rats coming out of the woodwork who wanted Bernard dead. The question is, who did it?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781405529433
Publisher:	Little, Brown Book Group
Publication date:	08/01/2013
Series:	Charlie Bradshaw Series , #8
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	564,579
File size:	682 KB

About the Author

Stephen Dobyns, author of eleven previous volumes of poetry and twenty novels, teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as numerous other awards. His novels include the Charlie Bradshaw Mysteries, the bestselling thriller The Church of Dead Girls, and the acclaimed new novel, The Burn Palace.

Editorial Reviews

PI Charlie Bradshaw and best friend Victor Plotz solve another mysterious death in New York's upstate horse-racing town of Saratoga Springs. Poet and novelist Dobyns ( Body Traffic ; The Wrestler's Cruel Study ) sends Charlie on jury duty in this, the eighth, entry in the series, giving center stage, and the narrator's role, to Vic. Bernard Logan, racehorse owner, offers Vic a larger than usual fee to find out if his wife and her lover are planning to kill him. Vic and Charlie, who's free on the following Saturday morning, arrive at Battlefield Farms to find Logan dead, apparently kicked to death by a horse. Following Charlie's directions, issued from the courthouse, Vic tries to learn more about the death, their client and the horse farm, where more suspicious deaths occur. Vic takes his work to heart and applies a method of interrogation that, unlike Charlie's serious, mild manner, offends and repels most of his suspects. Charlie and Vic pick their way through tangled acts of venality and homicidal hatred, including one ingeniously plotted death, before Charlie solves the case. Meanwhile Vic holds forth on women (older is better), sex (it's supposed to be fun) and religion (less is more) in a gruff and sometimes touching voice. (July)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Fearing that his wife wants him dead, a wealthy horse owner appeals to private eye Charlie Bradshaw for help. When a horse kicks the man to death shortly thereafter, Charlie and sidekick Victor Plotz uncover a host of bad feelings and nasty characters. Special fare for the ``horsey'' set. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/94.]

Library Journal

Charlie Bradshaw, the laconic hero of Stephen Dobyns' Saratoga mysteries, has been upstaged by his own sidekick, Victor Plotz, that "high on pragmatism, low on ethics kind of guy" who, until now, has been content to stay in the background while Charlie solved crimes. In the eighth entry in this stellar series, Dobyns elects to turn the starring role over to Victor, who accepts it with gusto. The plot centers on the death of thoroughbred owner Bernard Logan, who is trampled by one of his own horses just after hiring Charlie to find out who was trying to kill him. This seeming accident, soon exposed as murder, begins a deadly domino effect, as Logan's power-hungry relatives promptly start bumping off one another. With Charlie on jury duty, Victor draws the job of snooping about Logan's farm, and he quickly manages to offend everyone he encounters--except the reader, of course, who will fall totally under the hedonistic spell of the outrageously obscene, pleasure-craving, life-loving, 59-year-old Victor. Charlie's a great guy, too, of course, but will he ever be able to wrestle the limelight away from his pal? It won't be easy.

Bill Ott