BOOK REVIEW

by Richard L. Pangburn

THE MYSTERY AND THE HORSE

Horsepeople are generally literate people. Not everyone, but a significant number of us. The Thoroughbred Times had a short story contest some time ago, and they were flooded with entries. They had planned to publish just one or two, but they received so many good ones that they wound up running several over successive issues.

They were amazed at the quantity and quality, and after reading them, so was I. Despite the despicable trainers who routinely inject the ankles of their horses on the race track, just to get one more race, and despite the many owners who want the glory but not the responsibility for owning one of these magnificent animals, racehorse people, in general, are honest, intelligent, and literate.

Dick Francis, a famous jockey, became even more famous after he retired to write mystery novels, usually with horseracing as the backdrop. Horseracing is by nature a mystery, and in recent years, other authors have written mysteries drawing the connection. Good books on horseracing are written faster than you could possibly read them, and there are always chores to do and time is short. But here are some books especially worth reading when you can find the time.

Robert Reeves' Doubting Thomas is a comic romp. Just the first chapter alone is worth the price of the book.

"...Which was why I had come to the track twice a week for the past three years: to watch with fascination and dread and even with love as the sorry horseflesh struggled around the mile oval, carrying on their heaving backs the hopes of the sorry humanflesh who assembled there to bet on them. the air of desperation tugged at me, kept pulling me out of my own deadening academic routine, out of the collegiate calm where no risks were taken, where tenured futures were monotonously secure, and where I was Assistant Professor of American Civilization, Thomas C. Theron. At Suffolk, I was just another schmuck fingering a Racing Form. Here I was caught like everyone else, in a punishing cycle that with each race knocked me back and forth between hope and despair. The only difference between me and the drunk at my feet was racing luck."

"...The better horses carried more weight, the inferior horses less, the theory being that the distributed weight gave each horse roughly the same opportunity to win the race. But the fact was...half the horses at Suffolk were so infirm that they couldn't hit the wire first had they been weighted with helium balloons..."

"...After three furlongs they were not fighting for the lead so much as they were hellbent on seeking the comfortable security of the middle of the herd..."

This was Robert Reeves' first book, published by Warner Books in 1985 and available now in most used-book stores. He has since published other mysteries, but nothing as good.

Barry Malzberg, a prolific prize-winning author, has written two horseracing comic novels, Overlay and Underlay. In my opinion there is no comparison between the two, and indeed, Underlay prompted me to read almost the entire works of Malzberg and I found nothing nearly as good.

The situation in Underlay is comic, the writing is tongue-in-cheek. Suppose you could read horse's mind. Suppose a little voice inside your head told you about the other horses. Suppose you were touted by the little voice inside your head. This might remind you of the classic television series, Mr. Ed. But Maltzberg sprinkled in an abundance of wry and timeless comments on the horseracing industry:

"...The public trainer...is one who accepts horses to train from any stripe or persuasion...in contrast to the private trainer who works with the horses of the one large operation which employs him...this means that private trainers are able to cultivate, at least externally, a certain air of gentility, weary bohemianism, usually minor statesmanship, whereas public trainers, who come into a somewhat larger view of the world's heterogeneity, get all the nuts..."

"...Tony...somewhat more emotionally involved with his horses than the run of the mill public trainer, has taken the horse's dismal performances to heart, as being the willful efforts of a horse desirous of humiliating him...This is a common frailty of these people; the buck is always passed."

Things go badly for Tony, and in the paddock, he thinks maybe he has gone into the wrong profession. "Maybe he could have become a pharmacist and drugged horses on the sly," Malzberg writes. The jockey comes over to Tony, and Malzberg describes him as a French jockey who has ridden for two years on the circuit. He is overrated simply because he is European, and he "cannot really ride very well, being cowardly and arrogant by turns."

"...ignorant horseplayers have come to think of him as a longshot specialist because inevitably, one in fifty of the miserable horses which he rides will be able, through the incorporation of unknown medicaments, to stagger home in front of a field of horses as bad or slightly worse.On such cases, the jockey demands of the trainer even before dismounting that the proceeds of a hundred dollar bet be turned over to him instantly and refuses to believe that the trainer has not bet for him..."

Malzberg's Underlay has aged some since its first publication in 1972. But it is still a delightful read for horsepeople.

Although not as madcap as Malzberg or Reeves, William Murray also writes with humor and insight on the racing game. Hs is often described as the American Dick Francis, but I do not see anything similar in their writing styles. What they have in common is a link to the Mystery. Here is Murray discussing just that, from Tip on a Dead Crab:

"...the mystery of a horse race is in direct touch with still unsolved, untapped sources of energy that radiate from some dark, eternal force at the center of life. When I try to explain this feeling I often have to people who may never have seen a thoroughbred run, I am usually met either by polite incredulity or the tolerant smile of the average honest citizen for the hopeless addict. I don't try to rationalize it away or fight to explain it anymore. To those outside the charmed circle, the game seems mere folly, a useless and wasteful consumption of precious time; to those of us within it...the riddle at the heart remains...an act of faith in the human condition, nothing more nor less..."

Murray's books are all written in the first person, the narrator a magician by profession but always connected with the horseracing world. His often humorous soft-boiled mystery novels include the Getaway Blues, Until the Fat Man Sings, I'm Getting Killed Right Here, The King of the Nightcap, and Tip on a Dead Crab, almost all of them in print and easily found in used book stores.

Richard Pangburn is the author of the Indian Blood series which chronicles Native American ancestry. Thanks for the great reviews, Richard. Richard's dad was the track superintendent at Churchill Downs for years... so he knows what good stories are. He's heard a lot of them at the feet of some great trainers over the years.

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