The Trojan Colt by Mike Resnick, a Mysterious Review.

Review: Never one to turn down a paying job, Cincinnati PI Eli Paxton takes on an assignment to watch a race horse coming up for auction. No problem there … until the groom goes missing and Eli is subsequently hired to find him in The Trojan Colt, the second mystery in this series by Mike Resnick.

Tony Sanders seems to be dedicated to Tyrone, the name he's given the race horse he's grooming. (There are a lot of horse racing fun facts included here, including this one that gives the buyer of the yearling the right to name him.) On the night before the auction, Tony is clearly agitated, asking to speak to Eli privately the next morning. Unfortunately, the next morning comes and Tony is nowhere to be found. Tyrone's owner insists that he's simply run off, they all do at one point or another, and not to worry. Still, Eli does worry, especially when Tony's parents seek him out, asking him to find their son. Tony seems to be a nobody in the high stakes world of horse racing, but with a retainer in hand Eli takes on another paying job.

The Trojan Colt is a breezy mystery, written in a laid-back manner as Eli does what PIs do, ask lots of questions and ponder the mostly non-answers he gets in return. "I went through the whole cast of characters in my mind. There was only one left to speak to, the least likely of all to help me track down Tony Sanders. But I had simply run out of alternatives …" For an outsider, he moves easily among the horsey set, one of the few incongruities that pepper the not terribly demanding storyline. Still, the book length is appropriate, the mystery plot is nicely structured and moves along briskly, and the resolution is neatly tied up in the end. And as a bonus there is all that horse racing trivia to be picked up along the way.

Acknowledgment: Seventh Street Books provided a copy of The Trojan Colt for this review.

Dog in the Manger
Seventh Street Books (Trade Paperback), November 2012
ISBN-13: 9781616147105; ISBN-10: 1616147105

Cat on a Cold Tin Roof
Seventh Street Books (Trade Paperback), August 2014
ISBN-13: 9781616148898; ISBN-10: 1616148896

The Trojan Colt

An Eli Paxton Mystery by Mike Resnick