Richard Hoyt, Pony Girls

Pony Girls

Richard Hoyt

Forge, May 2004, $24.95, 268 pp.

ISBN: 0765306166

Thirty-six sperm whales died on an isolated Oregon beach. Two months later, sixteen European jumping horses followed by twenty-two Spanish Mustangs are murdered in various atrocities. A group forms called the Ad Hoc Committee to Save the Spanish Mustang. They hire Portland, Oregon based private investigating partners John Denson, Annie Dancer, and Willie Sees the Night to learn who and why the horses are being slaughtered.

The trio goes down their own paths trying to solve the mystery. Former reporter John seeks logical links even tying the dead horses back to the whale tragedy; ex-FBI agent Annie uses her information technology skills and links to look for serial killer patterns. Willie using hallucinatory drugs walks the out of body ethereal path of following the souls of the horses in their afterlife. As the threesome converges, evidence points towards the family of TV journalist Erika von Bayer, but which member and his or her motive remain unknown.

Readers will have to expand their horizons to accept what is reality in this weird private investigative tale in which anything is possible in the Hoyt universe. The story line is fun to follow due to the strange sleuth partners. John tries to emulate Holmes; Annie applies profiling to identify an animal killer; while Willie is tripping on some other plane that perhaps the Amazing Randi might debunk or be convinced. To appreciate the center of weirdness theme inside and outside a fine who-done-it, readers will need to shelve reality, but it is worth the trip.

Harriet Klausner