Let’s plunge straight in with the obvious - this book makes you think of Dick Francis. He always presents the horseracing world in a way that is understandable to the most ignorant of people - here Kit Ehrman achieves the same level of success in painting the life of horse training in all its exciting and unpleasant details. The hero, Steve Cline, has the mixture of toughness and vulnerability that makes for riveting reading - again reminiscent of the skill of Dick Francis.
This is the second book about Steve and there are already another 2 adventures following on. I haven’t read the first book but that has in no way marred my enjoyment since there are sufficient references back to make sense of Steve’s reactions and this is a new exciting, separate story. Steve is 22 and he works with horses in Maryland. As the book begins he is still recovering from injuries incurred in his first adventure and his father dies unexpectedly - he is shocked to discover after the funeral that his parentage was not as he had thought. While the revelation explains past events that he did not comprehend at the time it also complicates his responses to further happenings.
Steve is a true hero taking considerable damage from the baddies but tenaciously pursuing them. He agonises over his guilt for the things that happen and his emotional traumas spill over into his work. He is presented as a man who loves horses and enjoys the involvement with them but he also needs to take risks. This is a thriller with a real mystery at its heart as he works undercover to discover who is doping horses at the training barn belonging to Christopher Kessler, the man who was his real father.
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Jennifer S. Palmer
The first book in the series was At Risk, the third and fourth are Cold Burn and Triple Cross respectively. Kit also wrote in the anthology Derby Rotten Scoundrels from Sisters in Crime, Ohio River Chapter.