Murder at the Racetrack: Original Tales of Mystery and Mayhem Down the Final Stretch »

Otto Penzler is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He was publisher of The Armchair Detective, the founder of the Mysterious Press and the Armchair Detective Library, and created the publishing firm Otto Penzler Books. He is a recipient of an Edgar Award for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection and the Ellery Queen Award by the Mystery Writers of America for his many contributions to the field. He is the editor of The Vampire Archives and The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, which was a New York Times bestseller.

Lawrence Block, in Keller by a Nose," asks what obsession holds more hazards than betting on the ponies. The answer will surprise you...Max Allan Collins's "That Kind of Nag" proves that it's bad to play the wrong horse, but worse to pick the wrong woman..."The Great, the Good and the Not-So-Good" by H.R.F. Keating warns against old English ladies at the racecourse...Joyce Carol Oates shows how a young woman teams to trust a prize stallion more than her violent lover in "Meadowlands"...and Scott Wolven's "Pinwheel" offers a Japanese lesson in flying horses and honor among thieves."—BOOK JACKET.

Publishers Weekly

Penzler's third sports-themed anthology (after Murder at the Foul Line) is slow out of the gate but soon hits its stride. The opener, "Keller by a Nose," Lawrence Block's confused mix of stamp collecting and off-track betting, is followed by Ken Bruen's "The Return of the Thin White Dude... Screaming," a sordid tale of drugs and gambling. Things begin to get on track with Jan Burke's "Zuppa Inglese," in which intrigue surrounds the apparent suicide of a horse owner and restaurateur whose precocious son falls victim to an amateurish kidnap plot. "Yellow Mama's Long Weekend" by Lorenzo Carcaterra explores the sensitive relationship between a lovable steed and his debt-ridden trainer. Gambling addiction figures in Max Collins's taut South Side Chicago procedural "That Kind of Nag." Tension builds before the big race in Joyce Carol Oates's "Meadowlands," in which glamour-boy Fritzi Czechi sees betting on horses not as gambling but "an art." Other notable contributors include Thomas H. Cook, Michelle Martinez and Scott Wolven. (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.