Gargantuan: a Ruby Murphy Mystery

✍ Scribed by Maggie Estep

• Publisher: Three Rivers Press;Crown Publishing Group
• Year: 2004;2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 184 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

From Publishers Weekly

Five separate narrators tell a sometimes muddled story involving race fixing, kidnapping and murder in Esteps second Ruby Murphy mystery (after 2003s Hex), set primarily at New Yorks Belmont Park. The most distinctive voice belongs to Ruby, a good-hearted gal whos taken up with a troubled jockey, Attila Johnson, after the unexpected departure of her FBI agent boyfriend, Ed Burke. Attila, torn between his attraction to Ruby and his love for his seriously disturbed wife, also has problems on the track where hes trying to overcome past mistakes. Ed Burke, Rubys pal Big Sal and sad loner Ben Nester provide the other points-of-view, but their combined tale of tangled relationships, misunderstandings and jealousies isnt always easy to follow. Still, Esteps ability to take readers into the "backside" at the racetrack where the horses, jockeys, grooms and hotwalkers work make this an entertaining ride.
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description

Maggie Esteps critically praised heroine, Ruby Murphy, is back! Back in Coney Island with a bunch of endearing misfits, back at the racetrack ogling thoroughbreds, and back learning that, on the seamy side of the sport of kings, survival can be a long shot.

Rubys life is nothing if not complicated: shes spending a lot of her time worrying about a jockey named Attila Johnson; a good-hearted Teamster with a bad back; a neighbor who is suspicious of anything that moves; one very fat cat who craves raw meat; a missing FBI agent; an underused piano; a few fine horsesand the sure knowledge that somehow, somewhere, there is a killer among them.

✦ Subjects

A Ruby Murphy Mystery