FFB Review: Saratoga Backtalk (1994) by Stephen Dobyns (Reviewed by Barry Ergang)

Not only is it Friday, but Barry is back to kick off February with another all new review. Make sure you check out the full FFB list over at Patti’s blog.

SARATOGA BACKTALK (1994) by Stephen Dobyns

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

The first I knew of Stephen Dobyns, most likely somewhere back in the 1980s, was as a poet. It was only sometime thereafter that I learned he also wrote novels of various types and genres, among them the Charlie Bradshaw mystery series, the titles of which all start with “Saratoga” because the stories are set in Saratoga Springs, New York. Bradshaw is a former police detective turned private investigator. 

As the entry at the Thrilling Detective Web Site about the Charlie Bradshaw series indicates, Saratoga Backtalk (my sole experience with this series to date) is the eighth title in the series and the first to be narrated by Bradshaw’s friend, unofficial colleague, self-proclaimed “rat,” and “sort of” con artist, Victor Plotz. In this one, wealthy horse-owner/breeder Bernard Logan goes to Bradshaw’s office where he meets Victor, who mendaciously says that as Charlie’s associate, it’s his job to screen prospective clients. Logan wants to hire Charlie because he’s convinced his much younger second wife of eight years, Brenda, and his foreman, Randall Hanks, are plotting to kill him. 

Logan is the major stockholder of Battlefield Farms, located in a town ten miles from Saratoga. “It’s a family-owned business,” he explains. “My wife, plus a son and stepson from my first marriage. We have a lot of horses, both our own and those we train or breed for others.” After learning more about Logan’s family members and some of Battlefield Farms’ employees and the persons to whom they’re allied, and after collecting a hefty retainer, Victor assures Logan that he and Charlie will be there the next morning. After he explains the situation, Bradshaw reminds him that he, Charlie, has jury duty starting Monday. Victor figures they can settle matters over the weekend, whereupon Charlie agrees to go with him the next morning.

They barely arrive when they “saw people running, about half a dozen of them dashing toward the horse barn. A horse was whinnying so loud that it was more like a scream, and there were banging noises as if the horse was kicking down its stall.” A moment later an employee tells them that Logan is dead, having been kicked to death by a horse they later learn is named Triclops. The question is whether this was a bizarre accident or a murder.  

  

As the story progresses, several other mysterious deaths occurring along the way, Victor stays on the case, a kind of Archie Goodwin to Charlie Bradshaw’s Nero Wolfe, reporting what he learns to Charlie, who  serves out his jury duty requirements while intermittently joining Victor at Battlefield Farms and environs whenever he can.

A couple of amusing subplots concern Victor obsessing about having to spend the summer with a twelve-year-old granddaughter who is ultra-religious in ways he definitely is not, and with him trying evict an undesirable outlaw biker-type named Ernie Flako and his girlfriend Puma from a place they’re renting from him.

Victor Plotz’s wryly comic narrative style includes occasional deliberately ungrammatical moments combined with felicitous turns of phrase reflective of author Dobyns’s poetic background. It results in a neatly-paced whodunit which melds moderate characterization, some on-screen violence (but not a lot of gore), and intelligent detection.

Caveats: a few f-bombs, and some sexual explicitness, which will undoubtedly alienate some readers.

© 2018 Barry Ergang   

Some of Derringer Award winner Barry Ergang’s work can be found at Amazon and Smashwords.