We're Off to See the Killer

Shifty Lou Anderson, professional magician and obsessed horseplayer, always has a trick or two up his sleeve where, in this, his seventh adventure, he also wears his heart. But by the time the story ends, Shifty will have once again proved his ``inability to commit to any living creature without a saddle on its back,'' as Murray demonstrates anew his acute ear and eye for racing's argot and characters while avoiding the merely Runyonesque. Shifty becomes assistant to ailing Los Angeles trainer Charlie Pickard, narrowly escapes having his nimble fingers broken, loses his girlfriend, stablehand May Potter, and gets involved in a banking scam that uses the track and Charlie's employer's horses to launder huge sums of money headed to Balkan ethnic cleansers. ``Corruption is an American specialty and cheating is a national pastime,'' Shifty muses. He has always kept himself clean, however, and does so again in this tale that may fall a notch below the earlier I'm Getting Killed Right Here , but is still full of flavor and Shifty's gallant, galloping spirit. (Oct.)