Jockeys and Jewels – Bev Petterson

This was a Member Giveaway on LibraryThing, in ebook form – thank you!

The basic storyline: Kurt was a cop, specializing in undercover work, until he burned out on the deceit and absence of trust and the danger. His new life is as a trainer of racehorses, some of which are his. Then his old boss calls asking – begging – him to come back for one more case: Kurt’s old partner, who was just murdered in circumstances involving the racetrack. Reluctantly, he takes a couple of horses and heads to Calgary to look into it.

One of the “people of interest” in the case is an apprentice jockey, Julie: cute, of course, blonde, of course, and adorable. Dimples. It takes Kurt about four minutes to eliminate her from suspicion – she was the last apart from the murderer to see his ex-partner alive, and that’s it. Her adorableness has nothing whatsoever to do with it, of course.

What it says on the tin for this one is: mystery/romance set in the racing world. And it hits all of those elements pretty equally.  Kurt is looking for the reason the dead cop, Connor, was investigating the track’s stables, why he was murdered, as well as who did it. Naturally enough, he finds himself irresistibly attracted to Julie, and vice versa. And the book is placed in a detailed racing setting. Unfortunately, I think it fell a little bit short on all three components.

The mystery was not terribly successful, to my mind. Kurt has a total of one real suspect once he’s ruled out Julie, a horse-abusing short-tempered bully called Otto. Not to spoil anything, but what are the odds he’s guilty? Karma is big here.  The idea is that Connor helped Otto with a flat tire and saw something that raised his antennae, and looking into that was what got him killed. Is Otto using the horses to smuggle something? Drugs? Wait, what was the title of the book again? Yeah. Having a hugely massive spoiler in the title is just unfortunate.

Which is in addition to the fact that I find the title rather unfortunate for itself. Alliteration for alliteration’s sake – spoiler or not – is not a positive.

The romance is … quick. It begins with Julie distracted in nearly every other paragraph by how attractive Kurt is, and Kurt being distracted in nearly every other other paragraph by Julie’s cheekbones. And it runs fairly predictably from there, and features the least romantic love scenes I have ever read, not that I’m a connoisseur. Kurt is mildly Neanderthal, and it’s always from his point of view. And – not that this is necessarily a complaint, but it is odd – there is not much mention of anything below the waist. It almost seemed as if the author was uncomfortable with writing that part.

The writing, speaking of which, is well done, apart from some questionable punctuation and a considerable amount of head-hopping. This is something I’ve been guilty of, something which lots of books – older books especially – do, and which is generally frowned on now. This is an excellent example of why. There were some passages where point of view switches from one sentence to the next, and it’s flat out confusing.

I’ve loved horses as long as I’ve loved anything, and I enjoy books set in their worlds. It’s been a long time since I’ve read one, actually, possibly since the young adult horse books I used to revel in. Here there is no doubt that Bev Petterson knows what she’s talking about; she talks the talk with authority.  She Gets It Right according to the strictures of Judith Tarr.  The danger of racing is emphasized, which is a great choice to make – although it does also emphasize the fact that Julie’s a young woman.  I have two problems with the horse-world aspect, and they are both a little surprising to me. First is that in a book filled with horses, only one really becomes a character in the story. The rest are just creatures that eat and buck and run, lacking personality.

The other thing I didn’t like about the setting was the use of jargon. The author avoided the classic “As you know, Sarah” fault, so common in CSI, which involves one character telling another something they both should know as well as they know the alphabet, but which the audience needs explained (“Ah – look: petechial hemorrhaging – the blood vessels in the eyes have ruptured, indicating asphyxiation”) … The problem is that the way she avoids this is to not explain half of the jargon. The best way to clue a reader in is to engineer the context. This doesn’t happen here, over and over. I didn’t have any idea what a claims race is, and I still don’t, really; there was frequent mention of tack and equipment with which I was completely unfamiliar, and I have to say: if I don’t know what it is after a lifetime of reading about horses, then I can only imagine a complete newcomer to the environs would be baffled by it plus a lot more.

I can’t say I cared about anyone in the story; some of the minor characters were enjoyable, but the main focus was on people I couldn’t drum up much interest in. Kurt’s lack of finesse as a lover (in the old-fashioned use of “lover” as well as that more commonly used now) is off-putting, and Julie – a driven, ambitious apprentice jockey who wants to ride more than anything else – just made me angry as she proceeded to get comprehensively drunk the night before her first big race. The stupidity blew my mind. “Kurt stepped from Lazer’s stall, his expression inscrutable, and the butterflies in her stomach morphed into giant moths. Was he disgusted with her drinking last night?” If he wasn’t, I was.

It was a quick read, and mostly enjoyable; it could have been better.

 

LTER: Writing Horses: Judith Tarr

Been too long – I’ve been eBaying like mad, trying to free up some space and also earn a bit of money to pay for Clarence (the still-hateful Buick).

I received (via email) this book quite a while ago, and it’s just taken some time to finish it.

Judith Tarr is someone who’s been on my List forever; I think the first I read by her was The Hound and the Falcon, which was an astounding and beautiful trilogy. Alamut was gorgeous too, and I wanted a sequel to A Wind in Cairo in the worst way. It was the latter especially that proved to me that Ms. Tarr knows her horses – it was the perfect fantasy + horse book.

So I was tickled to win her Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting It Right. This is a book by a woman whose love of horses only grew, and who knows horses through living and working with them 24-7-365, in a way I could only dream of (she breeds and works with Lipizzaners, for heaven’s sake), who has been frustrated by the ignorance writers have shown in writing about horses and decided to do something about it.

That is one happy kid

I was a little smug going in.  I was a horse-girl, so in love with the beauties it came close to obsession.  I drew them constantly.  For fun I would trace the points of the horse diagram in one of my books and fill it in (cannon and pastern and fetlock, and dock and withers and crest and poll).  I knew the difference between a bay and a sorrel, and between a canter and a gallop, and fully intended to be a) a jockey (that was the Black Stallion books, that was, plus I’m short), b) a vet (probably thanks to James Herriot), or c) ride show jumpers (I was SO going to ride in the Olympics).  At a family-and-friends party my family went to a very obnoxious friend of the family challenged me; he’d learned I read all the time and that I loved horses, and decided to put me in my place, I guess, by quizzing me.  He asked me what the biggest breed of horse was.  In a “duh” tone of voice, I told him (Shire).  He shut up.  I was six.  When I was a little older I cleaned tack for free riding lessons (no stalls, though – wonder how I escaped that).  A bit more: my cousin in Newfoundland had a Shetland pony (Candy); I was about ten when we visited, and one of the best moments of my young life was when she bucked me off onto the porch.  She stepped on my foot and left a perfect tiny hoofprint - I loved it.  Another of the best moments of my life was when I was on a trail ride with a class and my horse (Spiz?) ran away with me.  We flew across a field - I stayed on – I loved every second, and was sorry when they caught us.

So, yeah, I never really had much fear of screwing up my horses in my writing.  And honestly I’ve never to the best of my memory come across anything too egregious – I’ve never seen a writer refer to a male mare or anything too idiotic.  I am, however, made very happy when a writer, as Ms. Tarr puts it, Gets It Right.  I love it when a character’s horse is not referred to as “it” – especially when it’s been identified as a specific gender.  I love it when a writer at least names the horses that appear.  If there’s more than that, I’m delighted.  But I am aware that it’s all a mystery to most people (hence all the hairy automata transporting people in so very many books) – so this is a brilliant idea.

The book (an ebook) begins with the very basic basics: a mare is a female adult horse, bay is brown with black mane and tail and points, there are two basic modern styles of riding, and so on; it goes on to give deep and useful detail about the basics (there’s no such thing as an albino horse) and some of the esoterica of breeds and disciplines. I’d say I did know about 90% of what this book explains (though not about the albinos) – but I’m a freak. For normal people who want to write anything in which a horse might come into the picture, this is incredibly valuable – I think anyone would be a fool not to use this book as backup for any mention of horses. It’s wonderfully detailed, insightful, and expert – and funny and well-written. The only thing I wish it had gone into would be a little more of horse personality and communication. Horses speak with their ears: pricked sharply forward means interest, flattened back means you need to back away, slowly and without any sudden moves. Whickers and whinnies and snorts and flaring nostrils and head shakes – I think it would be equally valuable to have knowledgeable insight on all the little details of equine behavior: corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude. Other little things about riding, like how it’s helpful to stand in the stirrups to ease weight off the kidneys if the horse you’re riding needs to urinate.  Speaking of which, some talk about the scents associated with horses – from manure to hay to the sweetness of a horse’s breath – would be a nice addition.  But overall, as far as it goes, Writing Horses is pretty fantastic, and a pleasure to read.  And now I want to reread A Wind in Cairo.