Competitive Reading, the Other Olympic Games

I am the absolute worst at noticing that a holiday or special event is coming up, and thinking of mystery books that relate to that event. I think my more with-it compatriots here might be having an effect on me, though. It suddenly occurred to me last weekend that today, February 7, would be the date of the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics, and that suggested the obvious theme post.

Even though I couldn't think of any Olympics-themed mysteries off the top of my head, other than several books set at the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics, I figured there must be a lot of them. After all, look at some of the sports, like the biathlon, with skiing and shooting. What could be a better set-up for a mysterious crime? If you move to the summer, how about archery, the javelin and the hammer throw? Limitless opportunities for a landscape(or competition field) strewn with dead bodies.

How about curling? That rock would make a heck of a classic blunt object, wouldn't it? I don't know, though. Curling seems to be most popular among people in the upper Midwest and midwestern Canada; areas legendary for their nice people. Just ask Garrison Keillor or Google "Minnesota nice."

Those judging panels for gymnastics and skating have always seemed like hotbeds of scheming and sabotage to me. And remember back when the Cold War would be played out in microcosm by the judges' scores? That would make an excellent scenario for an espionage novel, possibly complete with a defection.

Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan

Figure skaters themselves have been known sometimes for their cutthroat behavior, and I can imagine "death spiral" taking on a whole new meaning in that environment. Alina Adams has a mystery series with a figure skating theme, but it looks like none of them take place at the Olympics. It may be just as well, since I doubt fiction could top the real-life shenanigans back in the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan era!

In spite of this wealth of possibilities, I didn't find as much as I expected when I went looking for Olympics-themed mysteries.

M. J. Trow's lengthy Lestrade series features Arthur Conan Doyle's Inspector Sholto Lestrade, whose name you'll recognize as often-reluctant colleague of Sherlock Holmes. In the seventh book of the series, Lestrade and the Deadly Game, it's 1908 and the Summer Olympics are coming to London. Lestrade is investigating the ostensible suicide of an aristrocatic athlete. Why would he commit suicide just before the Olympics, though? Well, he didn't. And soon, other British athletes are becoming murder targets.

Robert B. Parker's Spenser novel, The Judas Goat, takes Spenser on a globe-trotting quest to track down bombers who killed his client's family. The novel's thrilling close takes place at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Recent reviewers write that despite this book's having been written over 30 years ago, it's aged well and is a classic early Spenser.

I had no idea that Peter Lovesey had written an Olympics-themed novel. This was in 1977, before he became well known, and he wrote the novel, titled Golden Girl, under a pen name, Peter Lear. In this era of nonstop scandals involving athletes using performance-enhancing drugs, you might be surprised to find that as a theme in a novel over 35 years old.

The "Golden Girl" of the title is Goldine Serafin, the adopted daughter of a physiologist who uses her as his guinea pig to prove his theories about developing superhumans. Not so much a daughter as a human experiment, Goldine is subjected to grueling training, psychological manipulation, electric shock, hormone treatments, and surgery, all as part of Serafin's plan for her to win three gold medals in track and field at the 1980 Moscow Olympics and gain massive publicity for Serafin.

This is more of a sci-fi-ish thriller than a mystery, and was adapted into a 1979 film of the same title. The film starred model Susan Anton and earned a favorable review from Vincent Canby in The New York Times.

Emma Lathen (the pen name for Mary Jane Latsis and Martha Henissart) wrote the long-running John Putnam Thatcher series, featuring a senior VP of the mega-bank Sloan Guaranty Trust. Number 18 in the series, Going for the Gold, is set at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. Thatcher is on the scene because Sloan has established a temporary branch at Lake Placid, and he finds himself with a double-barreled problem when the bank is robbed and a French skier is shot during competition.

The 1936 Berlin Olympics are arguably the most infamous in the Games' history. The Nazis had been in power for just a few short years and wanted to show their best face to the world. Anti-Jewish propaganda was toned down temporarily and the game sites were covered with Nazi flags, uniforms and gaudy demonstrations of the supposed superiority of the new order in Germany.

As you might imagine, there are many mystery and thriller novels set at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Philip Kerr has used it in two of his Bernie Gunther novels, March Violets and If the Dead Rise Not. Rebecca Cantrell has her journalist Hannah Vogel in attendance in A Game of Lies. David John's Flight from Berlin is a thriller pairing a British journalist and an American swimmer whose circumstances are similar to the real-life Eleanor Holm, that party girl whose antics got her booted off the US swim team but who was so popular with the press that she joined them in Berlin. Both Flight from Berlin and A Game of Lies feature the famous Hindenburg zeppelin as well.

Well-known sports writer Frank Deford's Bliss, Remembered is a love story, not a mystery or thriller, but its female lead is also based on Eleanor Holm. Jeffery Deaver's Garden of Beasts tells the story of mob killer Paul Schumann, who is caught by the feds and given the option of prison or doing a secret hit for his country. Schumann masquerades as a journalist reporting on the Olympics, while his real assignment is to kill the architect of Germany's secret rearmament plans. Don't confuse this book with Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts, the stunning nonfiction story of a diplomatic American family in Berlin in the early days of the Nazis' coming to power.

There are other Olympics-themed mysteries, of course, but not all that many. The good news is that leaves the field wide open for when you want to write your thriller about poison-pen attacks on figure skating judges, a deadly tampering of a bobsled, use of an icicle as a deadly weapon, or whatever nefarious scheme your murderous imagination might devise. Or you could just watch the actual Olympics over the next couple of weeks and see some criminally bad costume designs.

Golf, Anyone?

Coming from a family of golfers could have made me an eager player, but I decided years ago that I did not have the aptitude for recollecting where every shot ended up or the desire to share each moment either exhilarating or exasperating with folks after my ordeal. But I do enjoy watching Tiger Woods and reading about the game. You would think that a sport that commends and commands exemplary behavior wouldn't lend itself to murder and mayhem. But sometimes, what are you going to do with the perfect blunt object in your hand?

Real golfers, no matter what the provocation, never strike a caddie with the driver. The sand wedge is far more effective. (Huxtable Pippey)

Swing hard in case you hit it. (Dan Marino)

Of course, sometimes this weapon is used far away from the course, as in Junkyard Dogs by Craig Johnson.

As it finally warms up here, and heat waves wrap their humid tentacles around the denizens of the middle latitudes, winter is thankfully a dim memory. Walt Longmire, the sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming is immersed in snow. Walt is tired, and as cold as the winter, for several reasons. His daughter Cady had returned to the East to plan her wedding––for some reason leaving him out of the loop––one of his best officers is having second thoughts about his career, Walt himself has worries about his health that he is trying to suppress and, lastly, he won't let go and have the relationship he wants and needs in his love life. As always, he suppresses all his concerns in the job, and the job always comes through.

As in any town, there are people whose actions defy belief but that make perfect sense to them, and the story begins with Walt trying to figure out why a grandfather in his seventies has ended up in a ditch, after having been towed a few miles by a car. I know people like this, you know people like this, and so you settle in for this winter's tale.

The case this time involves an unusual death at a junkyard guarded by two vicious animals of great reputation. The corpse is old George Stewart himself, who was recently smacked in the head by a golf club swung by an irate neighbor. But this isn't what killed the old man. Before many days follow, the bodies are dropping like dominoes and the thread that ties them together is hard to find. Walt has to look within families to try and find connections, and he unearths secrets that are deeply hidden.

There are always many kinds of people who live in any community. Those who have been there for ages and those who saw the potential of the area and come to change it. This does not always make for peace.

As in any community, there is that ubiquitous junkyard surrounded by that chicken-wire fence that is an eyesore, but it provides an essential service. No one wants it in his or her neighborhood and everyone is afraid of the guard dogs. It is a symbol of the other side of the tracks. This sounds more like a big city or town concept, at least a place with tracks, not the wide-open-spaces-of-Wyoming kind of separation. But people are the same everywhere––with a Craig Johnson kind of twist.

There is a moral to this story. It is that problems are best faced straight on, whether they be people with criminal tendencies, family difficulties, physical problems, medical issues or junkyard dogs––or you may get bitten in the a$$.

You can always count on Craig Johnson to tell a great tale and take you into his Wyoming world for several hours. This was a great trip. I would score it an eagle (two stokes under par).

Golf is a game of coordination, rhythm and grace; women have these to a high degree. (Babe Didrikson Zaharias)

Following in the great Babe's footsteps by taking up golf is Lee Ofsted, a very interesting character who is a pro golfer in the LPGA. Lee is featured in the Charlotte and Aaron Elkins mystery series about her adventures as a sleuth as well as a competitor trying to break into the upper echelons of women's pro golf.

In Rotten Lies, the second of the series, Lee is 23 and she is playing the tour on a shoestring. Lee, for the first time in her life, is leading the boards at the High Desert Classic in Los Alamos, New Mexico, when the tourney is halted for a thunder storm. When play resumes, Ted Guthrie, the man most disliked at this club, is found dead on the course. In a cruel twist of fate, Lee injures her arm trying to revive Ted and she loses her first chance at winning on the women's pro circuit. The coroner suspects the lightning strike was no accident.

Lee has talent, courage, and an intuitive sense for seeing the way things lie––whether they're golf balls or nasty plots for murder. She senses that something is amiss at the Cotton Creek Country Club, so she and her lover, California cop Graham Sheldon, help snoop out a murderer. She believes someone closely involved with the game is the culprit, and all of the country club's colorful characters are suspect, from the old geezer holding a golf umbrella near the body, to her own cranky old caddy, Lou.

I was more disappointed in Lee's misfortune than she was. Lee takes life as it comes and, of course, is a good detective. This series is strong throughout and is great for a summer read. Score: Birdie (one under par)

Golf is a lot of walking, broken up by disappointment and bad arithmetic. (Attributed to Mark Twain)

One golf series that weaves the game of golf into the plots is Keith Miles's Alan Saxon string of golf adventures. Saxon is a pro who has passed his glory days. In Bermuda Grass, he has taken on the job of designing a new course for an exclusive resort hotel in Bermuda. He hasn't even had time to change into his bermuda shorts before he learns that there have been several attempts to sabotage the work.

For one thing, a new hybrid Bermuda grass has been stolen and equipment has gone astray. It seems also that there are hazards among the hazards when Saxon finds a disgruntled employee dead in the trees. Adding to the mayhem, Saxon's daughter and her girlfriend, who accompanied him to the Island, have been kidnapped. Saxon falls into a few traps before all ends well. Learning about Bermuda grass was the best part of the story for me. I felt like I was watching it grow. Score: Double Bogie (two over par)

Isn't it fun to go out on the course and lie in the sun? (Bob Hope)


Murder at the Nineteenth, by J. M. Gregson, is the first in the Superintendent John Lambert, Detective Sergeant Bert Hook compendium, both of whom are golfing enthusiasts in Gloucestershire, England. This is an extensive series, which include many crimes with golf themes.

In Murder at the Nineteenth, there is a violent murder at a historic country club, which included among its members Superintendent Lambert. The man was killed at the end of a business meeting, and all those attending are among the suspects. The detectives have to weave around all the lies in order to solve the crime. Readers who enjoy British police procedurals will enjoy these. Score: Bogie (one over par) (As the series progresses, the characterizations improve.)

I went to play golf and tried to shoot my age, but I shot my weight instead. (Bob Hope)

The Murder on the Links is the second of Christie's Poirot series, and from it comes a better picture of what this Belgian detective is like. The thing that struck me was that he might be a precursor to today's Adrian Monk. Hercule Poirot comes into a room and immediately looks around and, if he can, he will begin to straighten up the pictures on the wall, align edges of things out of place and generally look for what is out of order. This is basically the method to his madness, as the saying goes.

Poirot's second characteristic is that he leaves forensic details to others. He can't waste time on clues like cigarette butts or blades of grass because, frankly, he knows nothing about them and he refuses to make himself look ridiculous moving his nose across the ground like a hound dog. Leave that for the dogs, he says.

Poirot gets a frantic letter from France, where a Mr. Renauld is in fear for his life. Despite leaving immediately with his friend, Captain Hastings, he arrives too late. Renauld has been found in an open grave on a golf course wearing an overcoat, which is too large for him, over his underwear. Aside from the gross infringement of the dress code, the corpse has a look of absolute amazement and terror. Poirot makes the fantastic statement that he could see by the victim's face that he was stabbed in the back.

There are many entangled threads, involving several mysterious characters, that Poirot teases out in a delicate fashion, all the while poor Captain Hasting is totally lost at sea. He is a lot more than a day late and a dollar short. It made me wonder just why Poirot puts up with him. A young French detective named Giraud is on the case. He is apparently the best thing to be had in Paris. He is a young rapidly rising star in fact. His method is that of investigating the little clues of spent cigarettes, footprints and the like. He barely hides his contempt for Poirot when Hercule refuses to jump to conclusions. Naturally, Poirot has the last laugh while the Frenchman rushes back to Paris with a little less luster on his star.

I liked the early Poirot books the best because as yet I wasn't tired of the little grey cells comments. Score: Birdie (one under par)

It's so ridiculous to see a golfer with a one foot putt and everybody is saying "Shhh" and not moving a muscle. Then we allow nineteen year-old kids to face a game-deciding free throw with seventeen thousand people yelling. (Al McGuire)

Keep in mind that golfers putter on into old age and that it may be good sportmanship that keeps them in the game. Old golfers never die and they still have their drive.

A Sure Thing

Pimlico in Maryland, home of the Preakness Stakes

Most of my interest in horses began when, as a girl, I read such exciting stories as Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, Mary O'Hara's Thunderhead and even Marguerite Henry's Justin Morgan Had a Horse. Even now, I still read stories about horses when they cross my path. The best in recent years is Jane Smiley's Horse Heaven, in which two of the main characters are animals: a racehorse and a dog.

Racehorses are creatures of beauty, and I am old enough to have had the pleasure to see Secretariat cross that finish line as it happened––on TV, of course. And though I was in Baltimore when the second race at Pimlico took place, I also watched it from afar. This is a great time of year to read a racing story, as I'll Have Another, winner of the Kentucky Derby, goes into this Saturday's Preakness as a contender for the Triple Crown. There hasn't been a Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978.

One very enjoyable mystery is Full Mortality by Sasscer Hill. It is about Nikki Latrelle, a jockey who finds herself at the scene of two separate instances of murder at a track. She has a habit of going to the racetrack when she has insomnia. This habit has landed her in hot water and jeopardized her livelihood because, naturally, being in the wrong place at the wrong time too often leads to warranted suspicion.

Nikki works out of the Laurel Park racetrack in Laurel, Maryland. She has worked her way up to a reputation as an excellent jockey. The night before she is due to ride a possible winner in the next day's $200,000 Venus Sweepstakes, she takes a past-midnight trip out to see the horse named Gilded Cage. She surprises a man who runs out of the stall and knocks her over, and finds "Gildy" dead.

Nikki's main job is as an exercise rider for Jim Ravinsky, who is a trainer at Laurel. He had given her a chance when no one else would. Fortunately, Jim still has faith in Nikki and believes what she says. There are other trainers and barns at the Park and it is at one of these that Nikki believes there is some skulduggery. When a second horse is found dead, along with a dead jockey, and they are discovered once again by Nikki, she is denied access to the park.

Big Brown, photo by Louisville Courier-Journal

Nikki recognizes distinctive characteristics of horses and she recognizes a few horses back at the track that she has seen at Dark Mountain, a place that is, for most horses, a stop on the way to the glue factory, so she believes that some form of fraud is going on. She also finds it suspicious that the two dead horses belong to two widows who will now be collecting the death benefits of the insurance paying out now for "full mortality." (Full mortality is a form of life insurance covering the horse if it dies from accidental causes, sickness, disease, humane destruction and theft.) Nikki needs to clear her name and solve this puzzle.

Sasscer Hill lives on a Maryland farm and has bred racehorses for many years. She is best known for her stories in the Chesapeake Crimes anthology series. She brings the racetrack and the surrounding characters to life. The books have a fast pace and the back story of the racing world draws the reader onto the racehorses' backs as they fly down the backstretch. I enjoyed Full Mortality immensely and I'm looking forward to reading the next in the Nikki Latrelle series, Racing From Death.

I'll Have Another and Bodemeister in the Derby

I'm lucky I'm not bow-legged from growing up on horseback. I love horses and racing, although the thoroughbred industry needs to improve issues with safety and its retired horses.

Condi, we were lucky to have the chance to see Secretariat run; some of Big Red's track records still stand, and he is ranked second only to Man o' War on Blood-Horse Magazine's list of Top 100 U.S. Racehorses of the 20th Century. Including Secretariat, only 11 horses have won the U.S. Triple Crown, and I'll Have Another will need a big serving of luck to beat Bodemeister and Creative Cause in the Preakness, the second of the Triple Crown races, this weekend. I doubt he's up to it.

I liked Jane Smiley's Horse Heaven, too. The 2010 National Book Award winner, Lord of Misrule, by Jaimy Gordon, set at a third-rate horse racing track, and Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit: An American Legend are also excellent. For nonfiction books about thoroughbreds, a great source is Exclusively Equine, where the Thoroughbred Legends series and some of Barbara D. Livingston's beautiful books of photography are available.

Dick Francis steeplechasing

Dick Francis was an English jockey who rode for the Queen Mother, and his name is the one most closely associated with crime fiction involving horse racing. He wrote many mysteries (with the help first of his wife and, after her death, the help of their son Felix), both series and nonseries books. The stories vary in their connection to the business of horse racing. Francis's books are straightforward adventures/thrillers that are very well-plotted and paced. His trademark is good storytelling, without much extraneous description, featuring tough-minded protagonists and unique characters. It isn't necessary to like horses to appreciate his books; they aren't horse-centric. You might try Whip Hand (former jockey/PI Sid Halley is hired to investigate possible race tampering), Reflex (a racing photographer's death needs looking into), or The Danger (Andrew Douglas's job is to solve a series of track-related kidnappings). Since Dick Francis's death in 2010, Felix Francis has carried on.

Shoemaker on racing great Spectacular Bid

If asked to name an American jockey, many people would probably say "Bill Shoemaker." By 1991, Shoemaker had retired and was working as a race horse trainer. That year, he rolled his car in a solo drunk-driving accident and was paralyzed from the neck down. He continued to train horses from his wheelchair, however, and in 1994 he published the first of three Coley Killebrew mysteries, Stalking Horse, featuring an ex-jockey who now owns a restaurant in southern California. Shoemaker retired from writing and training horses in 1997 and died in 2003. He left racing fans many wonderful memories and three books of crime fiction. These books create a vivid picture of horse racing and are surprisingly good.

Good luck if you're betting on the Preakness tomorrow. Nothing besides death and taxes is a sure thing, but one of the books we've mentioned today might be a winner for you.