Great Horse Racing Mysteries

by John McEvoy

Examines several unsolved mysteries of the racing world-- murder...suicide...arson...fraud....Definitely some of horse racing's strangest, most fascinating tales.

Genres: Horse Racing, Mystery, Horses

264 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 2000

About the author

John McEvoy, former editor and senior correspondent for Daily Racing Form, is the author of five non-fiction books on thorougbred horse racing, including the award-winning Great Horse Racing Mysteries. Photo Finish is his fifth mystery novel and fourth featuring the adventurous Jack Doyle. One of McEvoy's earlier novels, Riders Down, won a Ben Franklin Award. He and his wife Judy live in Evanston, Illinois.

Reviews

[Jay French]

I found this collection of true stories of horse racing “mysteries” a bit uneven, in terms of both the story as well as the writing. But for my intent, a light read between deeper books with horse racing as a subject, this worked well. I found the variety in the types of stories interesting, but noticed that some really didn’t seem all that mysterious. Criminality was the basis for most, if not all of these stories. I thought that the most interesting would be the Alydar story, having read the excellent book “Wild Ride” on Alydar and the downfall of Calumet Farms. Here, the story is a short summary of what happened, with a lot of back story on Affirmed and Alydar. My favorite story in this collection was about Hawthorne burning, because Hawthorne is near where I live and I hadn’t heard this story before. But there’s not a lot to it. Again, I found this an OK book for a casual read involving horse racing (in my case this fit in where I’d normally read a Dick Francis book).

[Cynthia Sprout]

Worse writing I’ve ever endured.

[Don Massenzio]

Read for research. Good, factual information.

[Lenny Valvano]

Fine Book

[Lindsay]

Some of the stories drug on a little too long with information that did not seem relevant, but the stories themselves were all really cool.

[Sue]

true stories from the track