Customer Reviews

Chasing Cans: A Gail McCarthy Mystery (Gail McCarthy Mysteries)

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If you are a new mother, perhaps you can find some connection with this book. Baby is the theme, plot, subject of every page of the entire book. A constant, mind numbing narrative on motherhood. Gail McCarthy gave up a wonderful career as an equine vet. Now she ruminates in her cabin with Baby. Her hair is greasy and ragged, her clothes are dirty, her house is filthy. (Note: New device for shampooing carpet. Dogs. Globs of baby food on carpet. Dogs lick up what they can and that's good enough.) This book was appalling!

If I was a fictional doctor, I would prescribe antidepressants for Gail. The woman has to have a major case of postpartum depression.

Laura Crum, write another book if or when Gail 'gets a life'. Book deserves no stars and I deserve a refund.

I have to agree with other reviewers about the baby-centric tone. This is the first book I've read by Laura Crum; I was attracted due to the "horsey" subject, the veterinarian protagonist and the mystery genre. While I am going to look for the previous books in the series, I'm not going to hang on to this one. Gail McCarthy, the veterinarian, has just had a baby and the entire book is chock filled with ecstatic musings on the joys of stay at home motherhood vs how much she used to like being a career person, with thoughts on how other mothers should certainly be staying at home watching their cherished infants too. Oh yes, the mystery. A nasty horse trainer dies in a not-so-accidental fall while Gail is watching. Crum writes very well; I liked the mystery - I think I'll like the previous books in the series - but this particular entry isn't for me.

Having read all of the previous Gail McCarthy equine vet mysteries I was appalled to read this one. I agree that Gail seems like she is wallowing in postpartum depression and I felt like I was too after reading it.

Bring back the horses! Authors of equine fiction that actually know horses are hard to find and Laura Crum does know her subject. I won't be buying this one though....

In the tenth book in her Gail McCarthy series [only the second which I have read], Laura Crum's protagonist has, at least for the moment, and with only a bit of ambivalence, left her profession as a horse vet to be a full-time mom. Now at the age of forty, married for two years, Gail has found domestic life with her husband and year-old little boy to be more fulfilling than she could have guessed. As to the ambivalence: "I struggled once again with the inevitable conflict between this overwhelming drive to mother versus my own wish, neglected but not forgotten, to continue being the assertive, professional woman I was used to being. Gail McCarthy the horse vet, that was me. Independent, strong-minded, competent, in charge--these were the words that came to mind. Not tranquil, maternal, nurturing, patient--the virtues that went with mamahood. And yet, here I was."

As the book opens, Gail is confronted by her querulous neighbor, a horse trainer, where strong feelings, all of them negative, abound. When shortly thereafter the woman dies in what seems to be a freak accident while training a horse, termed a `horse wreck," Gail cannot ignore the feeling that something about the incident seemed wrong. The woman's enemies abound--Gail herself can be considered one of them, for that matter. But when another woman dies soon after in another horse wreck, under different but similarly `off' circumstances, Gail cannot ignore the fact that someone may have caused these events--the second woman is left in a coma, the question of her ultimate recovery unknown. When her friend Jeri, the detective assigned to the case, asks for Gail's help, since Gail knows all of the people involved and who could be considered suspects, Gail feels duty bound to help her, to her own peril it would seem.

The dead woman, Lindee Stone, was a well-known trainer of barrel racing horses, a sport of which I must admit I'd never heard. The horse doesn't actually race or chase the barrels. As it is explained, "three barrels, essentially oil drums, are set up in a measured triangle It is a timed event wherein the horse runs a pattern that involves making a specific, ordered U-turn around each barrel and then racing back to the line where he started. The loops around each barrel look a bit like the three lobes of a cloverleaf. The horse's time starts when he crosses the line, then he runs what they call the cloverleaf pattern around the barrels and when he crosses the line again, his time stops." Fastest time wins. It's a timed event and is apparently very demanding, both of the animal and the trainer as well. And Lindee had been one of the best, apparently earning medals as well as enemies along the way with equal ease. To me, the more interesting aspect of this is its reference to the sport as "Chasing Cans." As Gail says, "I guess it struck me as some sort of metaphor for the meaninglessness of life. We chase and chase after whatever it is we think we want - money, power, status - and then, in the end, it doesn't seem to mean very much. Not while you're lying in your grave," and seems to be the author's metaphor for meaningless pursuits.

The aforementioned work/amateur sleuth/full-time mother conflict is portrayed very realistically by the author, as Gail alternately pursues the investigation and then returns home to the magnetic pull of the incredible joys of bonding with her baby. But as she ponders the question "Was pursuing the truth for its own sake enough?" ultimately the answer has to be `yes.' The gorgeous descriptions of San Francisco's Monterey Bay area and the equine [and other assorted] animal population that abound there are wonderfully evocative of the place. The author is a fourth-generation Santa Cruz County resident who has owned and trained horses for over thirty years, and that knowledge is made evident in her writing. An enoyable read.

Chasing Cans
by Laura Crum

Perseverance Press, 2008. ISBN 1880284944.
Reviewed by Judith Helburn
Posted on 03/26/2008
Fiction: Mystery



Laura Crum is a skillful writer of mysteries with horse and horse breeding themes. She creates a fine balance between mystery and horsy information, without the overkill that I have found in some of the recent books by Rita Mae Brown.

Gail McCarthy, Crum's protagonist, has become a stay-at-home mom after being involved in numerous other mysteries in her career as a horse vet. Chasing Cans, a slang term for barrel racing, is used this time as the too-focused pursuit of career at the expense of family life. Our hero is close to self righteous and smug as she sings her praise of her perfect life with her perfect baby and her perfect husband. Perfect, except for the suspicious death of her neighbor, a barrel racing trainer. I was relieved when late in the book, Doctor McCarthy admits to being temporarily frustrated and even bored with her Mama job.

Once again, Gail finds herself unofficially helping her friend, Detective Jeri Ward, in her investigation of a possible crime. It is Gail's determination and her intuition that keep the investigation moving along with plenty of suspects and some danger to herself. Could there have been drugs involved? Were the ex-husband or ex-lover suspects? How about some of the owners who felt their horses had been badly handled?

Not only does Crum quickly involve her reader in an interesting plot, but she backlights the tale with vivid descriptions of her garden and the Santa Cruz county landscapes. Chasing Cans is a enjoyable read.

by Judith Helburn
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women