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Hex: A Ruby Murphy Mystery (Ruby Murphy Mysteries)
 
 
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Hex: A Ruby Murphy Mystery (Ruby Murphy Mysteries) [Paperback]

Maggie Estep (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

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Book Description

Ruby Murphy Mysteries March 25, 2003
Having drifted through thirty-three years of life, Ruby Murphy has put down roots in a rootless place: Coney Island. A recovering alcoholic who is fanatical in her love for animals and her misanthropic friends, Ruby lives above a furniture store and works at the musty Coney Island Museum. One day, Ruby is on the subway heading into Manhattan when the train stalls between stations. An elegant blond woman with a scarred face strikes up a conversation, and a misunderstanding between the two women leads to an offer Ruby decides she can’t refuse. The woman needs her boyfriend followed, and she thinks Ruby is the woman to do it—and do it right.

Ruby’s life has been flat and painful lately. The Coney Island Museum isn’t doing much business, Ruby’s live-in boyfriend has moved out, and her best friend Oliver is battling cancer. Ruby agrees to follow the woman’s boyfriend, Frank, a man who works at Belmont Racetrack and seems to hang out in odd places with bad company. Ruby soon finds herself pushed headfirst into horse racing’s seamy underbelly. This is a dangerous world where nothing is as it appears, and people and horses seem to have limited life spans. When Ruby finds herself staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, she begins to have second thoughts.

Only now it’s far too late.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ruby Murphy, 33-year-old animal lover and recovering alcoholic, makes a lovably quirky heroine in Estep's debut mystery. Bored with her job at the Coney Island Museum, Ruby agrees through a misunderstanding with "a willowy blonde woman" she meets on the subway to follow the woman's shady boyfriend. Soon Ruby is a hotwalker at Belmont Racetrack, indulging in her lifelong love of horses while tracking the slippery Frank, a horse groom and former trainer. When an obnoxious jockey infatuated with Frank dies suddenly, Ruby smells foul play and decides to investigate. Against the advice of her friends and neighbors, Ruby divides her time between the racetrack and yoga, classical piano lessons and buying organic ground turkey for her cats. What sets this book apart is its use of six narrators, including Ruby herself. At times confusing and annoying, this technique nonetheless adds texture and subtle shading. While Estep is no Dick Francis, she knows horses and aptly describes the folks who build their lives around them for better or worse. A charming mass of contradictions, Ruby is a female sleuth much like Sparkle Hayter's Robin Hudson, stomping around New York one step ahead of chaos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Ruby Murphy is an accidental sleuth and not a willing one. She would much prefer to keep bumping along in her dead-end job at a musty museum on Coney Island, taking piano and yoga lessons, and tending to her unappreciative cats and her motley collection of eccentric friends. But when she tells a gratuitous lie to a mysterious woman she meets on a subway, she finds herself being recruited for cloak-and-dagger duty at Belmont Park, which constitutes spying on a thug who may or may not be cheating on his girlfriend and, incidentally, killing horses. Ruby's affection for animals leads her to investigate the latter possibility a bit too vigorously, and soon her apartment is ransacked and her life threatened. It's a ride as horrifying as Ruby's beloved Cyclone, the monster roller coaster in the Coney Island amusement park, but the infectiously likable Ruby makes such a great companion that, once it's over, you'd like to go again. Dennis Dodge
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Three Rivers Press (March 25, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1400048370
  • ISBN-13: 978-1400048373
  • Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #437,166 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

10 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars spring tonic potboiler, April 4, 2003
This review is from: Hex: A Ruby Murphy Mystery (Ruby Murphy Mysteries) (Paperback)
I am not ordinarily uplifted by reading murder mysteries,but there is something strangely restorative about Hex.
The heroine,Ruby Murphy,holds cats,racehorses,rottweilers,
vietnam vets and carnies in a unity of regard and appreciation,
and it gives the whole story an intelligent kind of innocence.
To wit,"...then gently exploring my hair with his mouth,lightly nibbling but not using his teeth.I allow myself a few moments burying my nose in his neck and breathing in the warm smell of him.....",
The nibbler is equine, not human.
The bad guys in this story have a grace-challenged,junkyard dog feel to them.Joe the racehorse has adeep,Christlike resonance
to him.I wouldn't mind living this book for a while.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Fresh life for the mystery genre!, June 20, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Hex: A Ruby Murphy Mystery (Ruby Murphy Mysteries) (Paperback)
There's plenty of things about this book that set it apart from other works in the mystery genre, but if I had to sum it up into one thing it would be this: humanity. Ruby Murphy is endearingly, refreshingly HUMAN, as are the rest of the cast of this story, and we're allowed to get more than one perspective of what is going on, thanks to the creative use of different narrators, all of whom are wonderfully - and believably - eccentric. Maggie Estep breathes fresh life into the genre and leaves me wishing that some of her characters lived in my neighborhood, which is not something I can say for any other mystery I've read. Usually in a mystery you can't wait to get to the end to find out what happens, and while this one is definitely a page-turner, I was so in love with the characters and the world they inhabit, I didn't want it to end. The prose is direct yet very poetic and vivid. This book is a breath of fresh air - and an especially tasty read for horse lovers, as the author lovingly illustrates via Joe the racehorse what makes these graceful creatures so appealing. I'm eagerly awaiting the next book in the series.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Thrilling, even if you're not into thrillers, April 2, 2003
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This review is from: Hex: A Ruby Murphy Mystery (Ruby Murphy Mysteries) (Paperback)
Maggie Estep's quirky humor, smooth, crafted prose and multi-dimensional characters make HEX a treat to read and Estep's next books a delight to anticipate. I've never read a crime novel before but HEX is a genre-buster and well worth the (all-too-short) time it takes to read it. Brava, Maggie!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
I'm eyeing a willowy blond woman's red wallet when the F train stops abruptly, causing two large Russian ladies sitting across from me to lose control of their grocery bags. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
new hotwalker, lead shank, gray colt, bay filly, apprentice jockey, flying cockroaches, bay colt, exercise rider, filthy look, assistant trainer, sun salutations
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Ruby Murphy, Little Molly, Lotus Cat, Coney Island, Mark Baxter, Surf Avenue, Ned Ward, Raging Machete, Arnold Gaines, Asha Yashpinsky, Cop One, Long Island, Skee Ball, Stillwell Avenue, Brighton Beach, Jimmy John Mancuso, Miss Yashpinsky, Saint Ludwig, Twenty-third Street, Will Lott, East New York, Federation of Black Cowboys, Penn Station, Sebastian Ives, Anna Karenina
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