Scared Money

Scared Money takes readers on the inner journey that every successful horseplayer must make to overcome the cultural baggage that gets in the way of becoming a winner.It is not only the story of a horseplayer/musician learning to trust his judgment and intuitive skills at major racetracks in southern California, Maryland, and Europe, but anyone who finds themselves scorned by society because they have set the goal that is considered taboo, especially when they could have opted for a safer route.

``Scared Money is about... building the self-confidence necessary to prevail in a game where 98 percent of the players habitually get beaten,'' writes horseracing expert Cramer (Thoroughbred Cycles) in a preface here. And that's the problem with this first novel, the fiction-as-pedagogy story of a part-time jazz pianist whose full-time passion for the ponies, in Cramer's words, ``hopefully will allow readers to experience, rather than being told, what they must do to confront the ultimate enemy within''-i.e., lack of self-confidence. Along the way, narrator Matthew Bosch antagonizes his ex-wife, finds a new woman who can tolerate his obsession and meets a series of amateur and professional racetrack characters whose tales enhance his own. Bosch's battles with slumps, confidence problems and different betting techniques ring true, but the narrative, made choppy by secondary plots, clumsily told escapades and a breezy style (``Then there was hot and sassy Samantha, my new redheaded squeeze. The stats said that Sam would dump me....''), never quite gels.

Copyright 1994 Cahners Business Information, Inc.