From Booklist
Those who have read or seen Million Dollar Baby will find this posthumously published mystery from the late Murray to be curiously familiar. There is the crusty old trainer with deep emotional wounds, his faithful sidekick who more or less tells the story, and a young woman from the wrong side of the tracks with an unquenchable desire to be somebody. Because this is Murray, however, the milieu has been changed from boxing to racing, and the trainer trains, the sidekick bets, and the young woman rides Thoroughbred horses at Santa Anita and Del Mar in Southern California. Also, the sidekick is former gangland enforcer Sal "Bones" Righetti, whose innate nosiness leads him to search for the source of apprentice riding sensation Jill Aspen's troubled psyche. That search puts Righetti in harm's way, but he got his nickname by breaking bones, and he is nobody's pushover. Meanwhile, trainer Jake Fontana is preparing a rawhide-tough three-year-old that Righetti owns and Aspen rides, appropriately named Tumultuous, for the biggest race of his life. Murray's many fans will not be disappointed by his final act. Dennis Dodge
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
Dead Heat is a story of obsessions--of people driven to pursue their dreams and their desires at whatever cost. The haunted young woman who shows up one day outside the horse trainer, Jake Fontana's tack room at the Santa Anita racetrack is not merely looking for work, but has an agenda: she wants to become a great race rider.
About the Author
William Murray was a staff writer at "The New Yorker" for more than thirty years and authored more than twenty novels and works of nonfiction, including "City of the Soul" and "The Last Italian," He died shortly after completing this book.
