Saratoga Backtalk (A Charlie Bradshaw Mystery) - Hardcover

Dobyns, Stephen

3.7

83 ratings by Goodreads

9780393036596: Saratoga Backtalk (A Charlie Bradshaw Mystery)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393036596 ISBN 13: 9780393036596

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1994

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When a wealthy horse owner is kicked to death by a horse in Saratoga Springs, the pensive Charlie Bradshaw and his opportunistic foil, Victor Plotz, discover the enmity and suspicion that lie behind the man's death.

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From Publishers Weekly:

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.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

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

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