High Stakes

October 13, 2014
Jack Doyle has a knack for ferreting out dangerous situations, as shown in McEvoy’s appealing fifth mystery featuring the Chicago-based ex-boxer and horse racing enthusiast (after 2012’s Photo Finish). Retired race horses are often donated to vet schools for research. When someone starts killing the animals to keep them from being exploited, two FBI agents ask Doyle to use his racing contacts to seek leads. That chore doesn’t keep Doyle from jetting to Dublin, Ireland, to see jockey Mickey Sheehan win a major award. In Dublin, Sheila Hanratty asks him to help her bookmaker husband, Niall, who’s had several suspicious accidents recently. Doyle also tangles with a wealthy social media entrepreneur who’s determined to force an elderly couple to sell him their prized horse. On top of all that, Harvey Rexroth, a crook Doyle help put in prison, is arranging to have him killed. McEvoy deftly manages his busy plot while liberally spicing it with intriguing racing stories.

November 1, 2014

Former boxer and adman Jack Doyle now makes his living as an investigator in the world of horse racing. In McEvoy's fifth installment (after 2012's Photo Finish), Doyle finds plenty of action to keep him busy, from investigating the mercy killing of two retired racehorses by militant animal rights activists to helping a friend in Ireland who has been receiving death threats.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2014
Another ride around the track for Chicagoan Jack Doyle, the horse-racing insider and sometime sleuth. This time Jack is asked by the two FBI agents he has worked with on earlier cases (Photo Finish, 2012) to investigate the mercy killings of retired Thoroughbreds donated to veterinary schools. Notes left at the scene suggest the culprits are animal activists, but who? Meanwhile, Jack has another case on his hands, when a Dublin bookmaker friend asks for help in determining who is trying to kill him. Jumping between Ireland and the midwestern sites of the horse killings, Jack asks the questions that start turning the dominoes that lead to solutions on two continents. The bipolar nature of the tale is a little discombobulating, as if the reader were suffering from jet lag, but the appeal of this amiable series has never been the mysteriesor Jack's romantic life (he has a girlfriend in Ireland, too)but, rather, his mucking around on the backstretch with trainers, jockeys, grooms, and other racetrack folk. There could have been more of that this time, but the sweet smell of manure is in the air just enough to keep fans happy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)