The Last Virginia Gentleman
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A counterfeit stallion lures a Virginia horseman into a billion-dollar conspiracy
Vicky Clay awakes with chills. She’s still glowing from her victory in last night’s steeplechase—the genteel form of horseracing for which the Virginia gentry lives and dies—but that’s not why her skin tingles. She has been poisoned, and within seconds, she’s as useless to the world as a thoroughbred with a broken leg.
The stakes are high in the world of Virginia horseracing, where fortunes are won and lost by a hair. Captain David Showers, whose family has bred racing horses since before the Revolutionary War, knows how quickly luck can change. When he gets the chance to buy the descendant of a legendary mare, he leaps at the opportunity to revitalize his family stables. But the horse’s bloodline turns out to be a fabrication of the mafia, and Showers will have to ride faster than ever if he wants to stay alive.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A potent mix of sex, money, politics and murder propels the plot of Kilian's action-filled Washington-based suspense thriller. Ambitious White House chief of staff Robert Moody, working to win Senate passage of an environmental treaty, has failed to deliver on a promise he made to his billionaire best friend Bernie Bloch to bid on a thoroughbred horse in Bloch's behalf. The horse goes instead to Moody's disaffected daughter May, who buys it as a gift for David Showers, a rider who has impressed her with his sportsmanship. Showers realizes that the animal's papers are phony and decides to investigate the previous owners, especially since the Queen Tashamore bay is clearly worth far more than the price May paid. Showers's job at the State Department involves the aforementioned treaty, a complication as Moody pressures him to sell the horse to Bloch. Ensuing events produce a wake of dead bodies, human and equine. Although many of the characters are stereotypes (the horsey set is insufferably WASPy) and much of the action is based on real events that have lost their timeliness, Kilian's ( Looker ) depiction of the political arm-twisting is dead-on and the powerful resolution delivers a strong surprise.
