Saratoga Strongbox: A Charlie Bradshaw Mystery Starring Victor Plotz (Racetrack Mystery) - Softcover

Stephen Dobyns is nothing if not prolific: Saratoga Strongbox is his 13th novel in 12 years, and the 10th in his acclaimed Charlie Bradshaw series. His new novel sets Charlie and his sidekick, Victor Plotz, on the trail of dirty money when Victor agrees to collect a suspicious suitcase in Montreal for old man Weber. Unfortunately, when Victor decides to farm the job out to Eddie Gillespie, a bumbling black belt with an overactive conscience, he's quickly embroiled in a fiasco involving kneecapping thugs, an Amazonian snake-wielding stripper, and an overly greedy heir to a money-laundering fortune. Even more anxiety-provoking are Victor's fears that his girlfriend Rosemary, "the Queen of Softness," has been stepping out with a mysterious Dodge-driving Lothario. Make no mistake, Victor and his reactions are the stars of this novel; plot comes a distant--but still enjoyable--second. Victor might best be thought of as Thoreau meets Groucho Marx meets just about any character you can think of from a Samuel Beckett play. An inveterate student of the human condition with a penchant for observing and participating in the myriad absurdities of life, Victor feels his wallet throb whenever anyone mentions a quick buck.

The New York Times Book Review has noted that "Dobyns is every bit as good a writer as Dick Francis." Wrong. When it comes to dialogue and characterization, Dobyns is by far Francis's superior. Dobyns's sardonic humor is ever-present, percolating just under the surface or erupting into dead-on descriptions of the motley characters who populate his novels. Saratoga Strongbox gives the reader a thoroughly rousing ride to the wire. --Kelly Flynn

It's that unblushing reprobate Victor Plotz who narrates the tenth of the Charlie Bradshaw Saratoga novels (Saratoga Fleshpot, 1995, etc.), which means a point of view unredeemed by anything resembling a moral stricture. Plotz, 65, with a libido ever young--ask his inamorata Rosemary Larkin, a.k.a. the Queen of Softness--has never seen the lofty principle he'd give the time of day. ``I have always been the pal of easy money,'' he says. It's that kind of thinking that puts the wrong strongbox in Plotz's grasping hands, resulting in an open breach with a pair of mafia muscle guys determined to restore the box--fat with 250,000 in legal tender--to its rightful godfather. Inevitably, the disagreement also involves Charlie, a knight-errant in a porkpie hat and seriously rumpled clothes, who's as principled as Plotz is amoral. There's Charlie minding his own modest but impeccably honest p.i. business when Plotz sends out an SOS. Charlie can't ignore itor, for that matter, anyone's SOS. So one thing leads to another and finally to a madcap chase with more people running around after the loaded strongbox than have gathered in a forest since As You Like It. But that's when this very funny novel hits the snag that does it in, and the comedy turns to farce. And thats when readers will find themselves caring significantly less about what happens to Charlie and friends. Farce is the operative word here. It's like cold water thrown at readers half-mesmerized by a sure-handed storyteller: it wakes them up, breaks the spell. Farce is even riskier than satire, which, as everybody knows, is what closes on Saturday night. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.