Flamingo Road
by Sasscer Hill
Minotaur Books, 2017
Flamingo Road, Sasscer
Hill’s first (of two) featuring former Baltimore PD officer Fia McKee, is a
satisfying by-the-numbers detective thriller. Internal Affairs wants Fia’s
shield for excessive force after she kills a man strangling a woman, Shyra
Darnell, while on patrol. It was a righteous shooting, but when Shyra
disappears without saying a word, Fia resigns—rather than fighting the
investigation—to take a job with the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau (TRPB)
as an undercover agent. Fia is a perfect fit since she worked with her horse-trainer
father until his murder five years earlier at Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course.
The
TRPB sends Fia to Gulfstream Park, a race course just south of Hollywood in
Hallandale Beach, Florida, where there has been a rash of winners with long
odds (40-to-1 and higher) and suspiciously high betting patterns on those unlikely
winners. A combination that gives Fia’s bosses the uneasy feeling someone is
cheating by doping horses with an unknown performance enhancing drug. The
assignment is perfect since it gives Fia the chance to spend time with her
brother, Patrick, and her teenage niece, Jilly, and to investigate, during her
personal time, a series of horse killings in their upscale neighborhood.
Flamingo
Road isn’t
perfect. The opening is disjointed—with Fia traveling back-and-forth between
Baltimore and Southern Florida—and a reliance on coincidence. But once Flamingo
Road settles into itself, at about page 30, its varied positive
attributes—a likable and strong heroine is only one—easily overcomes its
imperfections. Fia’s narration is tough and smooth and reminded me of Sue Grafton’s
Kinsey Millhone. The horse racing backdrop is rich and believable and competes
handily with the likes of Dick Francis. There is a splash of suspense, a
handful of gripping action sequences, an eccentric cast of outlaws, and a blush
of romance. In short, Flamingo Road creates a world the reader
wants to inhabit for a couple of hours. Now, I need to find that second book and
plan my next visit with Fia McKee.
Click here for the Kindle edition at Amazon.
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