From Publishers Weekly
Michael Jacobs is an independent filmmaker in New York City whose just-released third film flopped like the first two. With no money and no prospects, he agrees to help fair-weather friend Sebby Laslo fix horse races. Unsurprisingly, the plan fails in spectacular fashion, and Michael, Sebby and Thierry, the jockey they're in cahoots with, end up on the wrong side of some very bad dudes. Loans from Michael's father and Beck Trier, a successful indie director Michael wishes was his girlfriend, aren't enough to pay off mounting debts, and when the surefire score the trio cooks up to balance the books backfires, bookies and bagmen take off the kid gloves. Dixon, an editor at the
New York Times, writes with convincing detail and lays on thick the bookmaking and horse-racing argot ("a clear field of three for win, place, and show, with Thierry on the sure-bet and Vato on the placer"), though Michael's actions at the climax are more a function of plot than character.
(Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
New York City filmmaker Mike Jacobs is so tired of being broke that it seems like a good idea when his friend and producer, Sebby Laslo, suggests they strike it rich by fixing a horse race. Sebby enlists two jockeys to do the heavy lifting, but Mike will have to place the bets with_a string of shady_bookmakers because Sebby has run out of credit. First, he needs to establish his credentials by losing a few bets--that's the easy part. The hard part comes when the horses who are supposed to win the fixed race collide and fall en route to the big payoff. One jockey is left paralyzed, the other is overcome by a need to confess, and Mike is left holding the bag for thousands in debts that he has no way of repaying. Just to survive, he'll need to do things he wouldn't have thought himself capable of doing, but he does them all the same. It is a descent into darkness that can only end in calamity, but the reader, swept up in the narrative momentum, can no more look away than Mike can avoid damnation, if not death. Dixon has written a cautionary tale that is not easy to enjoy but even harder to forget.
Dennis DodgeCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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