Sable Jones stars in a novella about a stud farm and a
suspicious death. KILLED FOR A KING’S RANSOM makes
reference to a stallion, called King’s Ransom, worth
the proverbial sum of money, too.
Sable lives at Silver Run rescue stables, where she helps
to retrain Thoroughbreds that have come off the track. These
horses may have been poorly handled; time is wasting, and
money won’t earn itself. Sable gets a contract to
handle the Colts at Coventry Farm in Pennsylvania.
The longstanding barn manager, Dottie Crane, welcomes
Sable, her personal horse Blaze, and dog Max. The cast list
is limited, so we don’t meet all the grooms, but this
is a thriving enterprise. That night, however, the owner of
the stud farm dies. The next day, Sable learns that he was
found dead in the stallion’s stable, and the horse has
vanished. Nobody is suggesting the elderly stallion harmed
the man; all seems quiet, and maybe Gerald Whitfield, a man
in his seventies, just had a heart attack. His son Phillip
and daughter Kareena stand to inherit. But where is the
valuable horse? Sable investigates, along with the police,
of course.
A few points seem strange to me. No CCTV? No RFID
microchip in the horse? Records on paper instead of a
spreadsheet? How come a stud farm of this status only had
one stud, when an accident could happen at any time? They
would surely have had a few promising colts and kept them
for potential studs. As well, there are many issues that
could compromise a TB bloodline, and I was looking out for
them, but we don’t get answers. This is like a Dick
Francis thriller with half the solution.
I love any story about horses, so I am pleased to see a
new stable hand on the block. I’ll look out for more
in this series called A Suspicious Death Cosy Mystery. I
would like the style to move a bit faster, though. We keep
getting told that somebody makes a remark in a deliberate
fashion, as if to hide the weight of years of deceit, or
something. I find it’s tedious and just pads out the
pages. Also, if you don’t know anything about keeping
horses at stud, what they eat, how long mares stay, or when
foals are sold, you still won’t. I would prefer to pad
the story with detail for verisimilitude.
Author Ellis Thorne assures us that Blaze and Max are
real, though everyone else is invented. KILLED FOR A
KING’S RANSOM should be enjoyed by lovers of horsey
crime stories. The novella length is just right for a
journey, and the thoughtful portraits may hook the reader.
Horse-rescue owner Sable Jones is settling into a temporary training contract at Coventry Farm when the unthinkable happens, its legendary stallion, King’s Ransom, vanishes overnight, and the farm’s owner is found dead in the barn.
The death is quickly labelled a robbery gone wrong. A valuable horse stolen. An old man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Case closed.
But Sable knows horses and nothing about King’s Ransom’s disappearance makes sense.
The powerful estate manager who never misses a detail.
A son with too much to gain and too little grief.
A rival breeder who wanted the stallion badly enough to make an offer that was refused.
And a farm with a past that doesn’t quite match its records.
With Blaze at her side, Max on alert, and whispers of bloodlines, secrets, and long-buried truths surfacing, Sable begins to pull at threads someone worked very hard to keep hidden.
Because at Coventry Farm, nothing is ever just about the horses.
And this wasn’t just theft.
Can Sable uncover the truth before the trail, and the killer, disappear for good?
No excerpt available.
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