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Vicar's Roses (aka Listen for the Click) (Jerry Brogan, Bk 1)
Vicar's Roses - aka Listen for the Click - Jerry Brogan, Bk 1 Author:Jon L. Breen The bronze statue of Vengeful stood proudly, majestically, on the grounds of the expansive Barchester estate outside of Los Angeles. At the great horse's feet lay the body of Hector Gates, the jockey who had ridden him to victory so many times -- and to inauspicious and suspicious defeat only once -- with a small, deadly hole in the co... more »lorful silks of the Barchester stables.
Olivia Barchester, the aging, widowed mistress of the estate, is less upset by the murder than perhaps she should be, but only because she is delighted by the chance to put to use her vast knowledge of criminology, acquired through the dedicated reading of mystery novels over many decades. It seems that for the charming Mrs. Barchester, there is no line to be drawn between real life and the stuff of crime fiction.
To aid her in her investigation, she calls upon her nephew, the droll and slightly overweight Jerry Brogan, announcer at the local race track, Surfside Meadows. And as if the murder were not enough for this affable young man, he must also contend with his aunt's desire to get her family back into the racing game, through the purchase of an over-the-hill gelding named Vicar's Roses (the name reminds Aunt Olivia of some of her favourite British detective stories).
Jerry, with the help of a friend -- Lieutenant Friend -- of the police department, quickly uncovers more suspects than the two men can handle. Hector Gates was not a well-liked man. On top of this, he was at work on a book, putting his racing memoirs down on cassette tapes to be transcribed by a ghost-writer, Tom Vinson. Could the tapes have contained incriminating gossip about any of the jockeys, trainers. or stable owners who all bore grudges against this most successful jockey on the West Coast? Did Hector make some damaging remarks about his wife, who stands a good half-a-foot taller than he did? Did he implicate the presence of organized crime in the horse-racing world, or in his own career? All these possibilities seem likely, but the tapes are nowhere to be found.
Feeling that she herself might be a suspect, Olivia seeks further help from private detective and aspiring mystery writer Stan Digby, who in turn enlists his associate, a veteran con artist, in an elaborate and hilarious scheme to dupe the old lady out of her fortune.« less