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TRIPLE CROSS
by Kit Ehrman
Poisoned Pen Press, January 2007
336 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 1590583027


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Steve Cline isn’t sure he wants to work hands-on with horses forever, although he loves the animals and can’t imagine not being around them. So he’s taking a course on some of the more mundane aspects of private investigating. Sounds pretty banal.

Steve is in Louisville, Kentucky doing a favor for his father, Chris Kessler, who's training a horse called Gallant Storm. Gallant Storm is running in the Derby and Steve is helping out by covering for an absent stable-hand. It’s Steve’s first trip to the Derby, at least as an adult, and he’s keenly aware of the hype and the mounting frenzy in and around Churchill Downs.

There are all kinds of people in and around the stables, and Steve picks one of them for his course assignment: Nicole Austin, a PR woman for Churchill Downs, who comes in to look at some of the horses. Rudy Sturgill invited Steve to a fancy party. Sturgill is a horse person, but definitely out of the league most people imagine Steve belongs in. Sturgill is connected to some pretty heavy money, but it’s all in oil, and he’s into horses.

Steve goes, mostly to see why he was invited in the first place. But he’s mugged in the john by people wanting some kind of tape they think he got from Nicole. Nicole, the women he met for five minutes. Steve is now curious. Battered, but very interested in Nicole.

When Steve gets back to his hotel, his room has been searched. Nicole has disappeared. Her car is at her house, but she’s not at work and then her apartment is searched. Curiouser and curiouser. The police eventually connect some of the dots, and come talk to Steve. They talk to him some more when Nicole’s body is found. None of this makes Steve any less interested in what’s happened to Nicole, and why.

TRIPLE CROSS is the fourth book in Ehrman’s series. It’s good. The plotting just keeps getting better. In each book we learn a little bit more about Steve and his family, what makes him the man he is, and what his flaws are. Ehrman has managed to place him in different parts of the horse world in each book, and in a plausible fashion. TRIPLE CROSS takes place in the world of money and privilege, but the motivations are as common as dirt. Fans of Dick Francis will almost certainly find some similarities, but Ehrman is no clone.

Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, October 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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