Tue 30 Aug 2016
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: JACK DOLPH – Murder Makes the Mare Go.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[2] Comments
William F. Deeck
JACK DOLPH – Murder Makes the Mare Go. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1950. Unicorn Mystery Book Club, 4-in-1 volume, hardcover reprint. No paperback edition.
On a two-year sabbatical, 35 year old Doc Connor twice a week has a clinic for the down-and-out. His primary interest, however, is horse racing. Thus, he is called upon by a horse trainer to check a horse, unfortunately already dead.
Doc suspects poison, rather than heart attack, and that’s what it turns out to be. Neither the trainer nor the horse’s owner, a nightclub operator, wants Doc to investigate, not that that stops him. Indeed, he goes on to discover that an elderly dishwasher at the nightclub died of glanders, which means be was around a horse with the disease or —
All of Dolph’s novels feature Doc Connor. From their titles, they also all deal with horse racing. If they are as good as this one, they are worth looking for.
The Doc Connor novels —
Murder Is Mutuel. Morrow, 1948.
Odds-On Murder. Morrow, 1948.
Murder Makes the Mare Go. Doubleday, 1950
Hot Tip. Doubleday, 1951.
Dead Angel. Doubleday, 1953.
August 30th, 2016 at 5:43 pm
The racetrack mystery goes at least back to Conan Doyle, and Edgar Wallace, who lost several fortunes on the horses, wrote a number of them. No one but Dick Francis seems to have really succeeded with the form, but it often makes a good setting and Dolph sounds worth checking out.
August 30th, 2016 at 7:15 pm
Here’s the Kirkus review of this book. I’m not sure it got scanned in correctly, but it’s enough to make me try one of Dolph’s books, the next time I come across one:
“Horse-loving Doc Connor dredges into the lives of his Broadway clientele to learn the answer to an equicide, and the murders resulting, and preceding, the death of a promising mare. Showing and spades to the NYC police, Connor, beaten up — and down — hangs on and hands the death deal to the right party. Bone up on glanders for this one.”