About the Book
What do you do when everything you've held to be true, when your entire life, in fact, turns out to be a lie? Do you run away? Start over? Create a new truth? This is the dilemma faced by what twenty-two-year old Stephen Cline. Bruised in body and psyche from his adventures in At Risk, Steve gets another blow in Dead Man's Touch, the sudden death of his estranged father in an automobile accident. At the funeral, Steve's disgruntled older brother calls him a bastard?and means it. Literally. Steve, he reveals, is the product of an affair. Confronting his socialite mother, Steve learns that his real father is a horse trainer, Christopher J. Kessler.
Curiosity gets the best of Steve, who's on leave from his job at Foxdale stables, so he heads for the Maryland track where he can find Kessler. The trainer soon notices that Steve is shadowing him and accuses Steve of working for a group of men intent on pressuring him to throw select races in a lucrative race-fixing scam. When Kessler learns that he's a father and Steve is his son, he recruits Steve to work undercover at his training barn to thwart the fix by discovering who's been doping the most promising horses.
About the Author :
Kit Ehrman has worked at show barns and breeding farms in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Visit the author's website at www.kitehrman.com
Review :
"Still recovering from the physical and psychological bruises he received in his first outing, At Risk (2002), 22-year-old Steve Cline, barn manager of a Maryland horse farm, faces more trauma when his estranged father dies in a car accident in this chilling sequel from Ehrman.... From the labor-intensive work in the oppressive heat of a Maryland summer to the cockroach- infested living quarters of the help, Ehrman creates an authentic and vivid picture of the reality behind the glamour of the races. The bad guys may be a bit too obvious, but with its sensitively drawn characters and enchanting horses with unique personalities, this is sure to be a contender for the winner's circle." Publishers Weekly
If horses and the care and racing of same occupy a sizable part of your interest, you'll be glad to hear that Kit Ehrman, who gave us the well-received "At Risk," has produced a second solid, diverting and apparently authentic equine mystery...Ehrman does a fine, spare job...Along the way we get enough details of the hard, smelly, underpaid life in that part of racing called--not without humor--the backside to make up for several screenings of "Seabiscuit." -- Chicago Tribune
"Ehrman, who has worked at show barns and breeding farms, strikes a solid claim to this gritty territory with another heels-up thriller that takes up where Dick Francis left off. In the barn." --Marilyn Stasio, " ""New York"" TImes""With its sensitively drawn characters and enchanting horses with unique personalities, this is sure to be a contender for the winner's circle. "Publishers Weekly"
"Smooth prose surrounds the knowledgeable equine subject matter, while Steve s psychological barriers provide ample subplot material. Recommended." "Library Journal" "Kit Ehrman has created a driven, principled character and puts him into situations where he must fight for the moral high ground . Readers who love the excitement of the race will be thrilled with the arrival of this new addition to the field of mystery fiction." --"The ""Denver"" Post" "Kit Ehrman, who gave us the well-received "At Risk," has produced a second solid, diverting and apparently authentic equine mystery." --"Chicago"" Tribune""
"Ehrman, who has worked at show barns and breeding farms, strikes a solid claim to this gritty territory with another heels-up thriller that takes up where Dick Francis left off. In the barn." --Marilyn Stasio, " ""New York"" TImes" "With its sensitively drawn characters and enchanting horses with unique personalities, this is sure to be a contender for the winner's circle.” –"Publishers Weekly"
"Smooth prose surrounds the knowledgeable equine subject matter, while Steve’s psychological barriers provide ample subplot material. Recommended." –"Library Journal" "Kit Ehrman has created a driven, principled character and puts him into situations where he must fight for the moral high ground…. Readers who love the excitement of the race will be thrilled with the arrival of this new addition to the field of mystery fiction." --"The ""Denver"" Post" "Kit Ehrman, who gave us the well-received "At Risk," h
Dick Francis fans rejoice. America now has its own version of stories about the horse-racing world and
the people populating it.... Kit Ehrman has created a driven, principled character and puts him into situations where he must fight for the moral high ground.... Readers who love the excitement of the race will be thrilled with the arrival of this new addition to the field of mystery fiction." -The Denver Post
Hidden away from the glittering stage of thoroughbred racing, with its flashing silks and gleaming horseflesh, is a place they call ''the backside.'' In her second stable mystery, DEAD MAN'S TOUCH (Poisoned Pen Press, $24.95), Kit Ehrman refers to this behind-the-scenes area -- where trainers, grooms, barn managers and stable hands minister around the clock to the needs of their high-strung charges -- as ''a world unto itself.'' Ehrman, who has worked at show barns and breeding farms, strikes a solid claim to this gritty territory with another heels-up thriller that takes up where Dick Francis left off. In the barn.
Steve Cline, the young stable hand who made such a strong and sympathetic hero in "At Risk," searches out the father he never knew, a thoroughbred trainer at a Maryland racetrack, and signs on as a "hot-walker," a lowly exercise worker, when he discovers that someone has been fixing races by tampering with his father's horses. In true Francis tradition, Steve takes plenty of physical punishment as a sleuth. But his undercover role also gives him the inside track on life as it's lived on the backside, a grueling, even squalid existence that pays off in the chance to get close to the magnificent animals that have more character and heart than the two-footed fools who view them as a commodity.
--Marilyn Stasio, NY Times
