Flamingo Road: A Mystery (A Fia McKee Mystery, 1) - Hardcover

SASSCER HILL was an amateur steeplechase jockey, as well as a horse owner who bred, raised, and rode race horses for thirty years in Maryland. Her first published novel, Full Mortality, was nominated for both the Agatha and Macavity Best First Mystery Awards. Born in Washington, D.C., Hill earned a BA in English Literature from Franklin and Marshall College. She now lives with her husband, dog, and cat, in Aiken, SC., where she still enjoys horseback riding.

"This high-octane thriller delivers with a multi-layered plotincluding horse racing, Cuban gangs, illegal substances and Family dynamics.Fia McKee is a tough, tenacious Baltimore cop turned Thoroughbred RacingProtective Bureau agent. Her sharp intelligence, physicality and ability to infiltrategroups make her a dangerous adversary for the bad guys. The plot moves swiftly,with plenty of action and nefarious situations. The author's inside knowledge ofhorses and horse racing adds rich, authentic details that flesh out the story,and the villains are particulary vicious and merciless, adding an atmosphere ofextreme danger and high adrenaline. The first book out of the gate in thisseries proves to be a surefire winner."--SandraMartin, Romantic Times

 

"The dark and dirty underbellyof horse racing is exposed when a Baltimore cop goes to visit relatives inFlorida.Internal Affairs has been very interested in Fia McKee ever since sheshot and killed the man who was choking Shyra Darnell, a hot walker at Pimlicowho's so afraid of someone that she refuses to answer any questions. When Fia'sbeloved father, a racehorse trainer, was murdered five years earlier, Fiajoined the police and has never given up on his case, which has now turned verycold. Put on leave, she answers a call for help from her brother, Patrick,whose wife has walked out and left him with a horse-crazy teen. Someone's beenslaughtering people's horses for meat, and when Cody, her niece Jilly'sgelding, becomes a victim, Fia gets mad and plots to get even. The night of thegelding's death, she meets a man named Zanin who runs the Protect the AnimalsLeague and is trying to stop the carnage. Zanin is sure the guilty party is aCuban-American who lives in the dangerous and lawless area known as the C-NineBasin, but no one's been able to prove that he's involved. Meantime, Fia learnsthat her problems back home may go away if she agrees to go undercover for theThoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau at Florida's Gulfstream Park, wherehorses that shouldn't be winning are suddenly showing amazing talent. Fia easesinto a job as an exercise rider for an honest trainer while trying to discoverwhat new, so far undetectable, drug is turning ordinary horses into superstars.Hill (Racing from Evil, 2016, etc.) boasts knowledge of horses and the veryreal problems in horse racing that fill this sound mystery with thrills andhair-raising action from first to last."--Kirkus 
 

" . . . will appeal to fans of all things horse racing,strong female protagonists, and Florida noir." --Karen Keefe, Book List. 

"In Flamingo Road, Hill proves that she can not only write a great mystery, she can also create a great character...For fans of female sleuths, Flamingo Road is an entertaining novel, marking the welcome arrival of Fia McKee."--Rachel Prindle, Mystery Scene Magazine

"In her never-a-dull-moment account, Hill'sunique combination of sharp writing skills and racing knowledge puts the readerin the moment - and in the saddle. Fia McKee is a sleuth with brains,imagination and logic-defying nerve. If getting in on the ground floor of a newseries appeals to you, this may be the door to go through."-- Fran Wood, NJ.com, True Jersey