Full Mortality
Jockey Nikki Latrelle gets the chance of a lifetime -- to ride the favorite in a stakes race -- only to have her dream destroyed when a mysterious intruder kills her mount the night before the race. Evil people are working at Maryland's Laurel Park race track, and when Nikki stumbles over the body of a gunshot victim, she quickly becomes the prime suspect in a murder case. Framed and facing a possible murder rap, Nikki is ruled-off the track.\ Even deprived of job and income, she cannot...
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Jockey Nikki Latrelle gets the chance of a lifetime — to ride the favorite in a stakes race — only to have her dream destroyed when a mysterious intruder kills her mount the night before the race. Evil people are working at Maryland's Laurel Park race track, and when Nikki stumbles over the body of a gunshot victim, she quickly becomes the prime suspect in a murder case. Framed and facing a possible murder rap, Nikki is ruled-off the track.Even deprived of job and income, she cannot abandon a mistreated, ill-tempered racehorse doomed to the slaughter house. Nikki and the filly wind up at a seedy stable with a motley group of felons, drunks, and drug-addicts. With unexpected help from a fashion-conscious wholesale meat-seller, a recovering addict, and an ancient groom, Nicky follows a crooked trail of insurance scam and betting fraud. But with the odds against her, can she clear her name — and put the real criminals behind bars?
\ Publishers WeeklyJockey and breeder Hill's fiction debut, the first in a new horse-racing mystery series set in Maryland, finishes several lengths behind the work of Dick Francis. Nikki Latrelle, who overcame a horrific childhood to land steady work as a jockey, loses her chance at the big time after the horse she was set to ride in an important race dies suddenly. Her bad luck continues when her next horse, which she actually rides in a race, has to be put down as the result of an accident caused by Dennis O' Brien, another jockey. She's on the spot again when she stumbles across a third dead horse, right next to O'Brien's murdered corpse. Stock plot elements include threats to Latrelle's safety and a possible romance. Despite her obvious knowledge of the turf, Hill fails to match Francis's facility at making the prosaic details of horse-racing interesting to the lay reader. \ (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.\ \ \ \ \ Ellery Queen Mystery MagazineLatrelle, compelled to visit her upcoming stakes mount Gilded Cage late one night at Laurel Park, finds the mare dead in her stall. Other equine and human deaths follow. First-time novelist Hill, herself a Maryland horse breeder, is a genuine find, writing smooth and vivid descriptive prose about racetrack characters and backstretch ambience that reek authenticity. Familiar plot elements are gracefully handled, including that old romantic-suspense conundrum: which of the attractive but mysterious males is the good guy and which the villain?--(Jon L. Breen)\ \ \ Mystery Scene MagazineThe gritty, exciting Full Mortality by Sasscer Hill (Wildside Press, $13.95), is set on Maryland race tracks, where protagonist Nikki Latrelle is a female jockey attempting to survive in a man’s world. And a rough world it is, too. Nikki’s world is as dirty as it is glamorous, packed with physical violence, betting scams, and insurance rip-offs, where horses and humans often pay the ultimate price. Simply because of her gender, the gutsy Nikki is so loathed by some male jockeys that one engineers an on-track accident that kills her horse and injures her. When the jockey is later found murdered, Nikki becomes the main suspect and is warned off the track, which dries up her income. Now she can’t even make her rent, let alone pay the board bill for the horse she rescued from a slaughterhouse. To keep body and soul together, she takes a job at another stable, only to find herself surrounded by drug addicts and felons, and other horses headed to the glue factory. Determined to win back her place at her home track, she starts digging into the jockey’s death. In between post calls and pay outs, we learn about the blood beneath the glitter, the hand-to-mouth existence that most jockeys endure. Mortality is a thrilling, eye-opening read written by a former steeplechase jockey who now breeds racehorses. Hill knows what she’s writing about. --(Betty Webb)\ \
