Robin Hathaway, Satan’s Pony

Satan's Pony

Robin Hathaway

Dunne, Oct 2004, $22.95, 224 pp.

ISBN: 0312333226

After a misdiagnosis caused the death of a young girl, Dr. Jo Banks quit her lucrative medical practice and tried to outrun her emotional pain. She fled to Bayfield, New Jersey to become the doctor on call to various models in the area. She lives in a suite at the Oakview Motor Lodge and uses a cabin to see private patients.

The tranquility ends when the rowdy noisy Satan's Apostle motorcycle gang arrives to stay at the motel. Her first reaction is that the boisterous group consist of criminals and quickly realizes that as a teenager she knew the club leader Pi, an MIT drop-out. She soon realizes these are individualists and even likes a few of them. When a biker dies from arsenic poising, the police suspect Pi killed him. Jo hides him while she quietly snoops for the real culprit.

Robin Hathaway her written a great amateur sleuth mystery that gives readers an astute glimpse into the workings of a biker gang, who are a factoid reflection of society as a whole. The protagonist is a good judge of a person's character and is not afraid to follow her hunches, although that could get her in trouble with the law. SATAN'S PONY is heavenly reading.

Harriet Klausner