Book review: Bradshaw brings along a friend for ‘Saratoga Backtalk’
(May 3, 2025) — I have almost half a bookshelf worth of Stephen Dobyns’ poetry books. So, what was “Saratoga Backtalk,” a Dobyns’ Charlie Bradshaw mystery, doing there? It belonged in fiction or at least on my horse story bookshelf.
I love a good horse story and still have my collection of Marguerite Henry books. But I like mysteries every now and then, and in today’s environment (including a rainy Portland), it was a perfect day for a mystery. It’s been a long time since I’ve had so much fun.
Third paragraph, page one: “My name is Victor Plotz, and I’m fifty-nine years old, or thereabouts.” Wait a minute! Where’s Charlie Bradshaw?
I began to wonder if maybe I had a Bradshaw dustjacket on the wrong book. It took another couple of pages to get Plotz’s history and why it allowed him to make questionable phone calls from Bradshaw’s landline when Bradshaw was out of his office.
And there he was, his feet on Bradshaw’s desk when a “little guy” comes in mistaking Plotz for Bradshaw. Plotz isn’t a licensed PI, but he occasionally helps Bradshaw and introduces himself as Bradshaw’s partner and offers to help.
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The novel is Plotz’s to tell. The “little guy” owns a farm. He breeds, trains and races horses. He has a second wife who’s having an affair with his foreman, and he believes they are plotting to kill him. And he has proof. He wants Bradshaw to come to the farm the next morning at exactly 10:30.
Both Bradshaw and Plotz arrive just after 10:30. The “little guy” is dead, stomped to death by his wife’s pleasure horse. The scene is bedlam.
The book is about murder and horse racing and a family coming apart. In between the race-paced story, there are moments of Plotz’s outrageous descriptions of his life outside of helping Bradshaw. It’s bawdy stuff, but considering the age of Plotz and his lady, it’s funny as hell. Bradshaw, however, is an upright, moral guy, so all the noir dialogue belongs to Plotz.
Who killed the breeder? The horse? Or the rats that drove the horse mad? The wife? Maybe the trainer? Or how about the stepson? Or the breeder’s own son who had a lot to gain?
There’s enough skullduggery to go around so that every time readers think they’ve figured it out, that suspect is also murdered. They’re dropping like horse flies! We must expect the unexpected.
By the end of the mystery, PI Bradshaw deduces who the killers were and were not. And the reader has been greatly entertained, as well as learning a lot about the world of horse racing.
Next time the weather turns, I think I’ll hunker down with more Bradshaw mysteries.
Sunny Solomon
Sunny Solomon holds an MA in English/Creative Writing, San Francisco State University. She is a book reviewer for “The Clayton Pioneer” and her poetry and other writing has been published in literary journals, one chapbook, In the Company of Hope and the collection, Six Poets Sixty-six Poems. She was the happy manager of Bonanza Books, Clayton, CA and Clayton Books, Clayton, CA. She continues to moderate a thriving book club that survived the closure of the store from which it began. Sunny currently lives next to the Truckee in Reno, NV.