cover image Monza

Monza

Bob Judd. William Morrow & Company, $20 (269pp) ISBN 978-0-688-11320-9

Judd gets into the heart of his latest racing thriller at the same high rates of speed that his series hero, driver Forrest Evers ( Formula One , The Race ), uses to earn his living. As the story opens, Evers is being dragged naked from his bed in a hotel outside Rome by the Italian police, paraded through an angry crowd and tossed into jail. Eventually, he learns he has been accused of the brutal stabbing of beautiful Rosella di Santo, wife of his bitter rival and teammate, Guido. Evers spirited Rosella away from her home the previous evening, literally minutes after meeting her for the first time, when she convinced him that her life, and that of her week-old son, were being threatened by Guido. When Rosella's parents are murdered with the same knife while Evers is in police custody, he is released. It seems apparent that the killings were carried out by Guido (or his henchmen), but there seems to be no official action in the case. Having promised Rosella on her deathbed that he will protect her son, Evers sets out to uncover his teammate's ties to the Mafia and heads for Sicily, accompanied by a young woman who represents herself as the dead woman's sister but turns out to be something else altogether. Judd supplies lots of racing lore and history here, along with the requisite high-speed climax on the Monza track, but once the pace slows down from the arresting opening chapters, the story itself is difficult to take seriously. (June)