OR ELSE…!
If you like racing novels by Dick Francis, you’ll love OR ELSE…! by Peter D. Tattersall
A Colin O’Hearn Racing Novel
Hard drinking Virginian Colin O’Hearn, son of an Irish Steeplechase jockey,was one of America’s most promising trainers, but has lost almost everything. Gone are the only woman he’d ever loved, his clients and their horses. He’s trapped on the backside of Suffolk Downs, his “salad days” gone forever.
OR ELSE…! is a vivid picture of the hard racing life on a backside that features a cast of characters from racing’s colorful and heart warming “Lost Souls and Black Cats” to Boston’s most ruthless mobsters.
When North End “Don” Vito Corsetti hires Colin to train a new stable, he’s thrilled, until forced to buy horses with a half million in questionable cash. A Miami drug task force traces the cash to Colin. When a Russian mobster is found clubbed to death with his shovel, the trainer is arrested. A shady Boston FBI agent, an aging Irish law professor, and a veteran homicide detective, meet at The Little Venice, Vito’s famous eatery, and try to help Colin find the killer.
OR ELSE…! is a gritty murder mystery with a trail of bodies, all leading to O’Hearn. Using ageless training secrets, Colin and his groom Jock Murphy work tirelessly turning rundown rejects into winners.
Colin’s best pals, jockey agent Arch Hale, and Evan Kennedy, the horsemen’s favorite bartender, do everything to keep him from ending up in the cold waters off Boston’s Harbor. Jimmy Slacks, Corsetti’s “shooter” with his 50s hairstyle, starched black pants, spit-shined cowboy boots and a pencil thin mustache is almost comedic. But, there’s nothing funny about his .44 Magnum that makes him the most feared man in Boston.
He and Colin form a friendship that saves the trainers’ life, but not his career, as the Feds pull every dirty, legal trick to get him to turn on Vito in court.
OR ELSE…! is a heart warming, action packed racing mystery, the first of the Colin O’Hearn racing mystery series, and is a guaranteed out of control, downhill read.
Peter D. Tattersall was a 30-year veteran trainer for some of racing’s best known owners until retiring. His first book, CONVICTION received international attention and has been optioned for a major motion picture. His sequel to OR ELSE…!, THE ALMOND MAN is scheduled for release in the Spring of 2009.
Tattersall lives with his wife Nell and 15 year old son Tom in his native Staunton, Virginia. His son Peter, Jr. a newspaper writer and daughter Nolan, the mother of five, the eldest nine, live in New Orleans.
