Saratoga Headhunter

Charlie Bradshaw #3

by Stephen Dobyns

The decapitation of a former jockey hiding out in his house is just the beginning of Charlie Bradshaw's troubles. An old man dies in a fire, murder finds a stable owner, Charlie's Volkswagen is blown to bits. And while tracking down the vicious killer, the ex-cop turned private eye must prove that he has no mob connections. "Charlie Bradshaw makes a most welcome reappearance." (The Washington Post Book World)

Genres: Mystery

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Dobyns was raised in New Jersey, Michigan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. He was educated at Shimer College, graduated from Wayne State University, and received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1967. He has worked as a reporter for the Detroit News.

He has taught at various academic institutions, including Sarah Lawrence College, the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, and Boston University.

In much of his poetry and some works of non-genre fiction, Dobyns employs extended tropes, using the ridiculous and the absurd as vehicles to introduce more profound meditations on life, love, and art. He shies neither from the low nor from the sublime, and all in a straightforward narrative voice of reason. His journalistic training has strongly informed this voice.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

The third in this series and the first one where the main character is somewhat a Private Investigator. As a mystery I guess this is ok, a character makes a point of saying that the main characters way of solving crime is like a clown antagonizing people at a dunking booth. He just keeps at all the suspects until he gets on of them angry enough to slip up. This is as opposed to any kind of brilliant Sherlock Holmes like deductions. This is pretty apt for the novel, there murder is solved by brute force instead of intellectual finesse, and this leaves the reader pretty much as a passive spectator in seeing who did it, as opposed to being able to try to solve the crime themselves. Is this something that readers are supposed to try to do when they read mystery novels? Or am I just deluded by something my grandmother told me when I was little?

Some things I found personally interesting. The main characters PI office is located above the bookstore Lyrical Ballad, which is the first bookstore Karen and I visited in this aifaf: http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...

One of the characters lives in a boarding house that I once spent a particularly surreal evening watching VHS tapes of HBO documentaries about white power groups with a self-proclaimed Nazi who had a running commentary about how awesome each person being interviewed was.

One place in the book where an office building is supposed to be is actually a parking lot, and I'm positive it was a parking lot when this book is supposed to take place. This annoyed me slightly, mostly because just about everything else in the book is geographically exact.

That's all, I don't have a lot to say about this one. It was a nice book to read while feeling sick and doing laundry today, but if it weren't set in my surrogate hometown I doubt I would have enjoyed it very much.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

With this third installment, the Charlie Bradshaw detective series really hits its stride. The first book was just OK, the second was an improvement but this one knocked it out of the park.

Charlie and Vic, no longer working security at the racetrack, have set themselves up as private detectives. Vic is doing most of the heavy lifting, though, as Charlie has been lumbered with delivering milk every day as a favour to the regular milkman, who is off visiting his dying mother.

So far, so run-of-the-mill, until people start turning up dead... and that's when the book becomes one of the best detective stories I've read to date. It's exciting, it's spooky, it's often very funny and the ultimate pay-off knocked my socks off.

I'm really looking forward to returning to this series in the new year.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I an reading this series in order and this is the 3rd book and so far the best. Has much more of the Saratoga and racing community aura about it. The hero is a loser, but we hope for better things in the future. I will read the 4th book

[Lisa Arnold · Rating 2 out of 5]

Still searching for a good horse mystery, unfortunately this isnt it. Either American racing is very different to Australia and Great Britain or this is very badly researched and totally unrealistic. Its a big no from me

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

An oldy, but pretty good. I like the Saratoga racing background, and the plot is good enough.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read enough mysteries and some protagonists start to look similar. Charlie Bradshaw and Irwin Fletcher could be roommates. Still, Dobyns is a keen writer - his later works, such as Church of The Dead Girls, were always on the mark. This is the first of the Saratoga/Bradshaw series I've read and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's worth going back to find the books in this series for mystery enthusiasts or just for a good beach read.

[Riley Reinhold · Rating 5 out of 5]

he comes and loses his head in charlies house..great storytelling!