Loose Lips: A Jerry Brogan Mystery

Fans of Dick Francis and aficionados of the racetrack will enjoy this perky mystery, Breen's third featuring Jerry Brogan ( Listen for the Click ). Brogan, track announcer at the Surfside Meadows training center, plays amateur sleuth when unpopular racing writer Woody Creston is found smothered with a souvenir horse blanket. Creston was a drug pusher and blackmailer who kept files of juicy information on potential victims--Brogan included. (One jockey who fed gossip to Creston rode a horse named Loose Lips.) Following a hunch that might link another jockey, Vance, to the killer, Brogan finds Vance's stabbed body in an alley. Sportscaster Rog Korpelsen invites the suspects to a special edition of his show Sports Squawk , on the pretext of talking horses with them, but poses tricky questions on the air in order to divert attention from the real slayer--stealthily hunted meanwhile by Brogan. Colorful characters--owners, jockeys, trainers, and journalists--populate an entertaining story. (Feb.)