Flamingo Road: A Fia McKee Mystery

While perhaps not in the winner’s circle, this horse-racing series launch from Hill (Full Mortality) earns at least a show. The powers that be encourage Baltimore cop Fia McKee to become an agent with the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau after a shooting leaves her in hot water with internal affairs. Meanwhile, Fia’s brother, Patrick, whose wife has left him, needs her help with his troubled 15-year-old daughter, Jilly, who’s scared of a horse-butchering ring active near their home in Broward County, Fla. Fortunately, the TRPB wants Fia undercover at the nearby Gulfstream Park racetrack investigating what appears to be an unknown performance-enhancing drug, so she’s able to pursue the two different cases simultaneously. Hill skirts some clichés, with Fia checking off boxes for beautiful, headstrong, and tough as nails, while Jilly plays the bratty and horse-obsessed teen. Still, she does a good job developing the horse-racing background, as well as depicting the criminals who populate the C-Nine Basin (aka the Wild West of Florida). [em]Agent: Ann Collette, Helen Rees Literary Agency. (Apr.) [/em]