Synopsis
Quint McCauley becomes embroiled in the long-time feud between Jubal Tanner and his brother, mayoral hopeful Brig, when he is asked to find out who killed Brig's girlfriend while trying to kill Brig.
Reviews
This undistinguished addition to a series that had a strong start in the first-rate Murder in Store places Quint McCauley, a PI in semi-rural Foxport, Ill., in between two battling brothers. Brig Tanner is running for mayor of Foxport; brother Jubal is the family black sheep who raises Morgan horses. Brig, who has bought a horse that Jubal covets, bests Jubal in a barroom brawl; when Brig's girlfriend is murdered, Jubal hires Quint to clear his name. As the siblings quarrel over money and steeds and land and women, innocents get killed. Horse lore and feuding figure large here; Quint and his lady Elaine go riding when they aren't fighting. Brod fails to engage her readers with this plot that, like horseback riding in a ring, expends considerable energy but doesn't get very far.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A fourth outing for Illinois p.i. Quint McCauley (Masquerade in Blue, 1991, etc.) finds him more involved with his dog Peanuts than with his current squeeze Elaine and his lying client Jubal Tanner, who's being railroaded into jail for the murder of his brother Brig's lover Gayle. Was the bullet that killed her meant for Brig? Peanuts is abducted; Sheriff Carver is abruptly replaced by his bought-off deputy Moore; and a major source of friction between the Tanners--the purchase of the stud horse Kessler--turns out to be a nasty joke gone awry. Moreover, Brig's son Will was also romancing Gayle, and Jubal's wife, Claude, is quietly going mad embroidering blood-red roses. Then Quint winds up in the emergency room after someone laces his beer with LSD, and two more will die before the Tanner brothers confront each other--and Quint drives off with a reclaimed Peanuts by his side. The unlovable Tanners are far less interesting than Quint and Elaine falling out of love. As puzzles go: only so-so--too many melodramatic family secrets clutter the plot. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Contemplating his love life over a St. Patty's Day brewski in a local pub, detective Quint McCauley of Foxport, Illinois, is shaken from his reverie by a brawl between the Tanner brothers. Jubal and Brig have a long-running feud that time only seems to fuel. The fight breaks up with no damage, but when Quint leaves the pub, he finds a drunken Jubal in the parking lot and drives him home. Jubal takes to Quint like a stray dog to a can of Alpo. When Brig's girlfriend is killed by a bullet meant for Brig, Jubal is the prime suspect. Naturally, he hires his new best friend, Quint, to find the real killer. There are a half-dozen suspects, aside from Jubal, with solid motives. The small town, on the far western edge of Chicago's sprawl, is a snake pit of family jealousies, personal discord, greed, and political ambition. This fourth McCauley mystery maintains the series' standards of good plotting, sharp dialogue, and resonant small-town ambience. Wes Lukowsky
Series private eye Quint McCauley mixes a bit of flattery with his direct, sometimes argumentative, approach to questioning suspects, but he lacks finesse. His technique comes into play when an Illinois horseman accused of trying to murder his brother hires Quint to prove otherwise. Alleged police cover-ups, political manipulations, drug-induced hallucinations, a car chase, and more murders force him to rely on his girlfriend, Elaine, for help. Mostly uninvolving: kind of a Western feud set near Chicago. Possibly for larger collections.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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