Saratoga Haunting Book

It's been years since Charlie Bradshaw traded in his badge and a steady paycheck for the hard-scrabble but independent life of a private eye, but his past is catching up with him - with a vengeance. A man he was responsible for convicting twenty years ago has been paroled from prison and seems to be out to get him, if the death threats Charlie has been receiving are any indication. As if that weren't enough, another of Charlie's old cases is proving that sometimes secrets refuse to stay buried. When the site of what used to be Jacko's Pool Hall is bulldozed to make way for the public library, the skeleton of a woman believed to have escaped to South America with embezzled funds literally comes to the surface. Although he's been off the force for ages, he feels morally obliged to solve the case. To top it all off, his irreplaceable, irrepressible girlfriend, Janey Burris, wants a commitment. With his trademark humor, Stephen Dobyns sets Charlie to deciphering the past while staying alive in the present amid what is truly a cast of "characters," Saratoga-style - epitomized by his eccentric friend Victor Plotz and the ailing Maximum Tubbs. Between the excavation of the past and the soul-searching of the present, the solutions to the mysteries of the human heart turn out to be just as satisfying as the unraveling of this deliciously complicated plot.

Street-wise P.I. Charlie Bradshaw returns in a new Saratoga racetrack mystery. A man Charlie helped convict 20 years ago has been paroled from prison and is sending Charlie vicious death threats. To add to his problems, his long-time, one-in-a-million woman Janey Burris wants a commitment.