From Publishers Weekly
The nitty-gritty grunt work that takes place off the race track, and out of sight in the horse barns where mares are bred and foaled, is the backdrop for Ehrman's absorbing third mystery to feature Steve Cline, a bright and observant young barn manager (after 2003's
Dead Man's Touch). At the behest of his friend Corey Claremont, Cline takes a job on Virginia's Stone Manor Farm to look into the disappearance of Corey's brother, Bruce, who quit his job abruptly. Like Bruce, Steve is assigned the grueling "foal watch" night shift. His search for clues to the whereabouts of his missing predecessor begins at the farm and spreads far afield, leading him to investigate arson, murder and drug-dealing while he fends off dangers from a variety of sources. Suspicion points toward a bullying stable worker but also toward a jealous co-worker—and later to one of the farm's two owners and then to the other. Steve demonstrates more grit than deductive powers and more sense about the horses he cares for than the women crowding his life, but he has a pleasing honesty. Ehrman's knowledge and exposition of life on a horse farm is most impressive and enjoyable.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Ehrman's third Steve Cline mystery finds Cline working the night shift at a Virginia Thoroughbred farm in foaling season, and the detailed, apparently accurate account of what normally goes on there is among the book's chief attractions. Another is Cline's secret attempt to find out what was behind the baffling disappearance of his predecessor, Bruce Claremont, whose knockout sister has convinced Cline to play sleuth. In that role, he encounters a rash of arson fires that eerily mimics a spate of fires that occurred 19 years earlier, an irrationally jealous boyfriend of one of the farm's employees, and a quantity of missing cocaine--each of these may or may not be related to Claremont's disappearance, but all of them put Cline squarely in harm's way. Ehrman skillfully ratchets up the suspense en route to a surprising conclusion that nonetheless makes perfect sense. That is to say she fully engages the reader, then leaves him or her satisfied. What more could you ask of a mystery?
Dennis DodgeCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
