MURDER AT THE RACETRACK, ed. by Otto Penzler, Mysterious Press, 361 pages, $24.95.
Otto Penzler, the founder of Mysterious Press, has assembled a delicious assortment of stories from some of the best mystery writers at work today.
Of course, they all have one theme in common — the dangers and oddities of the racetrack, and "mayhem down the final stretch."
Lawrence Block's "Keller By a Nose" is the lead-off story, which asks what obsession holds more hazards than betting on the ponies. The answer is collecting stamps. But this story about Keller going back and forth from ponies to stamps is told with the whimsical style for which Block is noted:
" 'I didn't bet on him,' the man said, 'and I didn't bet against him. What I had, I had the Eight horse to place, which is nothing but a case of getting greedy, because look what he did, will you? He came in third, right behind the Five horse, so if I bet him to show, or if I semi-wheeled the Trifecta, playing a Two-Five-Eight and a Two-Eight-Five. . . . '
"'Woulda-coulda-shoulda,' thought Keller."
Don't worry. You don't need personal experience betting on horses to grasp this story. You pick it up as you go.
Then there's Joyce Carol Oates, bless her heart. She is one of the finest and most diverse living writers. Who would have thought she would fit into this mystery collection?
Oates' story is classier, better-written than Block's, but it also involves race horses, along with a woman named Katie who is a little too much in love with a sullen gangster-type named Fritzi. She is driving his huge BMW to Meadowlands, a popular racetrack where his horse, Morning Star, will be racing.
Katie wonders if Fritzi imagines himself racing for really big money at Belmont Stakes or the Kentucky Derby. "Was this where Fritzi Czechi was headed, or thought he might be headed? Or was Fritzi just a small-time Jersey horse owner, hoping for luck? Katie felt how deeply her life was involved with his, or might be. She wanted him to win, if winning was what he wanted. . . . A man is the sum of his moods, it was moods you had to live with. If he had a soul, a deeper self, that was something else: his secret."
The race was still ahead — and so was a triple murder. And Katie's life would never be the same.
The variety of stories and writers — there are 12 more — makes for witty and consistently well-crafted mysteries, all revolving rather dangerously around horses.
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com