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Shame the Devil
Book by Leavitt, Alan J.
222 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 17, 2017
When I finished the non-fiction book Crazy Good about pacing horse Dan Patch, I went to my bookcase to decide what to read next and noticed this novel set in the harness racing world. I know a sign from the Book Universe when I see one!
Author Alan Leavitt is a big name in the sport. He is even in the harness racing Hall of Fame for the contributions his equine breeding program have made to the sport. And because Leavitt was also an world record holding amateur driver (he might even still be ~ drivers stay active a lot longer than jockeys can) he was able to give this book an authentic feel, from the banter between grooms to the strategies for driving races.
I used to subscribe to the industry publication Hoof Beats, which is where I ordered this book years ago. I read it back then, but only the one time so it was completely fresh and new for me this time around.
Our hero is Johnny Behn (pronounced BANE, but that is nearly impossible to remember). He is an assistant trainer at a huge track in New Jersey. He arrives after leaving the owner he had been working for on a private farm in Pennsylvania. That owner never lived up to the promises he had lured Johnny with, so now he is starting over in Joe English's barn.
He is assigned to a barn containing twelve horses that he will be responsible for training and racing. One of the horses is a pacer named Shame The Devil. The first time Johnny hears that name he thinks it is a great one for a champion. Will he turn out to be correct? Can he figure out the secret to getting Shame's talents in gear? But can he also figure out the secret to getting along with the grooms in the barn? There is Sondra, a very large and very direct black woman; Kelly, a beautiful blonde chatterbox with blue eyes to die for; and Petey, an innocent backwoods type of kid. Will they become a team?
The owners of any race horse will usually be around a lot, especially on race days, yet here we meet only one, Mr. Nieman. But he owns quite a few horses, including the two that Johnny talks the most about, Shame The Devil and Easy Street. Every so often Johnny wonders where the other owners are, but decides they must be seeing their horses trot or pace in the races out of town. There seems to be an awful lot of traveling done in this barn, and one of the other assistant trainers always goes along with the horse and groom to make sure everything goes right. Johnny thinks this is a bit out of the ordinary, but he gets so caught up in his work that he rarely thinks much about anything else until he eventually finds out (much to his surprise) exactly what has been going on.
This book is fast-paced, gritty, not politically correct much of the time, and might shock a few readers with its realism. The language is not always proper, and some of the topics the grooms and drivers talk about are not very polite, but they are always true to life and often times hilarious (Those gerbils ~~ LOL! And Sondra's comments during her television interview ~~ thank goodness it wasn't live!) I laughed, I held my breath, I got caught up in all of the action, and I felt right at home. After all, horse barns and their people are pretty much the same all over the world.
One of the things I look for in a horse book is whether or not the story feels real. Does the author really know his subject? In Shame The Devil Leavitt proves that he does. I wish he had gone ahead and written another book. The dustcover says he was working on his second novel, but that was back in 1987 and I have not seen any listings for him other than this book. Too bad. I would snap up anything he wrote quicker than you could say Dan Patch!
Author Alan Leavitt is a big name in the sport. He is even in the harness racing Hall of Fame for the contributions his equine breeding program have made to the sport. And because Leavitt was also an world record holding amateur driver (he might even still be ~ drivers stay active a lot longer than jockeys can) he was able to give this book an authentic feel, from the banter between grooms to the strategies for driving races.
I used to subscribe to the industry publication Hoof Beats, which is where I ordered this book years ago. I read it back then, but only the one time so it was completely fresh and new for me this time around.
Our hero is Johnny Behn (pronounced BANE, but that is nearly impossible to remember). He is an assistant trainer at a huge track in New Jersey. He arrives after leaving the owner he had been working for on a private farm in Pennsylvania. That owner never lived up to the promises he had lured Johnny with, so now he is starting over in Joe English's barn.
He is assigned to a barn containing twelve horses that he will be responsible for training and racing. One of the horses is a pacer named Shame The Devil. The first time Johnny hears that name he thinks it is a great one for a champion. Will he turn out to be correct? Can he figure out the secret to getting Shame's talents in gear? But can he also figure out the secret to getting along with the grooms in the barn? There is Sondra, a very large and very direct black woman; Kelly, a beautiful blonde chatterbox with blue eyes to die for; and Petey, an innocent backwoods type of kid. Will they become a team?
The owners of any race horse will usually be around a lot, especially on race days, yet here we meet only one, Mr. Nieman. But he owns quite a few horses, including the two that Johnny talks the most about, Shame The Devil and Easy Street. Every so often Johnny wonders where the other owners are, but decides they must be seeing their horses trot or pace in the races out of town. There seems to be an awful lot of traveling done in this barn, and one of the other assistant trainers always goes along with the horse and groom to make sure everything goes right. Johnny thinks this is a bit out of the ordinary, but he gets so caught up in his work that he rarely thinks much about anything else until he eventually finds out (much to his surprise) exactly what has been going on.
This book is fast-paced, gritty, not politically correct much of the time, and might shock a few readers with its realism. The language is not always proper, and some of the topics the grooms and drivers talk about are not very polite, but they are always true to life and often times hilarious (Those gerbils ~~ LOL! And Sondra's comments during her television interview ~~ thank goodness it wasn't live!) I laughed, I held my breath, I got caught up in all of the action, and I felt right at home. After all, horse barns and their people are pretty much the same all over the world.
One of the things I look for in a horse book is whether or not the story feels real. Does the author really know his subject? In Shame The Devil Leavitt proves that he does. I wish he had gone ahead and written another book. The dustcover says he was working on his second novel, but that was back in 1987 and I have not seen any listings for him other than this book. Too bad. I would snap up anything he wrote quicker than you could say Dan Patch!
January 21, 2018
Harness racing mystery....
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews