Notes on the Trouble Line

Notes on the Trouble Line is a literary crime novel about a streetwise young horseracing handicapper who becomes entangled with rival race-fixing mobsters. In the summer of 1982, twenty-one-year-old Michael Kipness claims he won big just in time to flee New York City. The truth: he stole money from his grandfather's mob associates. With enough cash for a stake and a cross-country train ticket, Michael heads west seeking refuge with his friend and mentor, Alfred, who is dying of AIDS. Alfred sees Michael clearly - a troubled young man whose gifts as a handicapper (attention to detail, memory, imagination, disciple) make him a brilliant storyteller. He challenges Michael to pursue his passion for the races and to tell his story honestly.

At Seattle's Longacres racetrack Michael discovers his gift for reading horses makes him valuable to dangerous men. A notorious race-fixer wants Michael’s help fixing races. A local gangster with a taste for violence claims Michael’s expertise for himself. Back in New York the men Michael stole from want their money and revenge. The FBI wants him to inform against them all. The danger Michael faces is both physical and moral. He must use his nerve and his ability to read a trouble line to outmaneuver the men who are determined to control his destiny.

Along the way, he meets Lisa, an intuitive counterpart who sees Michael is ways he is yet to see himself. Caught between loyalty, survival and the longing to make one clean bet, he must discover what honesty means in a world built on secrets and bad odds.

My first novel, Gloria, was published by Simon and Schuster and several foreign houses, including Rizzoli, Belfond, MacMillan and Goldman. It received praise from the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, among many others. I’ve won several literary awards, including the Rinehart Prize for Fiction from George Mason University.

Notes on the Trouble Line is set in the authentic world of 1980s horse racing. It will appeal to readers of Stewart O'Nan's City of Secrets, Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes, and Don DeLillo’s Underworld.