Mystery Author & Equine Expert Patti Brooks to Appear at Equine Affaire

Mystery author and equine expert Patti Brooks will be at this year’s Equine Affaire in West Springfield, Massachusetts at the New England Morgan Horse Association Booth.

In her latest mystery, BLOOD HOAX. (Husky Trail Press; $15.00; trade paperback), Ike Cherney’s fiancée, Tuleigh McKenna, disappears into thin air. Ike goes to bed each night fearing Tuleigh is in danger. He spends his waking hours fearing he may not ever find her. The only thing she left behind is her GPS, nicknamed Olga, that contains forty-three men’s names—the only clue Ike has with which to discover her whereabouts. Ike’s search for her will take him down a trail of deceit that will have far greater consequences than he imagines, a path of duplicity and fraud that will threaten to be the undoing not only of his lost love but also himself, his career, his colleagues and friends.

Tuleigh’s boss is as perplexed by her disappearance as Ike’s boss is indifferent. Ike’s boss, Dr. Becker, owner the Beckmere Farm, thinks she ran off with a farmer’s son. Besides, Dr. Becker can’t afford to have Ike crisscrossing New England in search of her because he needs him overseeing his horse farm, which breeds and raises world-class Morgan show horses.

Undaunted, Ike spends his spare time with Olga tracking down each destination stored in its memory. The trip takes him to a seedy bar and a callous sheriff, a prison that proves impenetrable yet is linked to a former employer, a Peking duck farm on Long Island, a suspicious lawyer who knows more than he’s willing to tell Ike, and ultimately an encounter with the notorious Nardozzi crime family. “I think it’s time,” says Ike “that I face the fact that there was more…a lot more…going on in Tuleigh’s life than she told me.”

Back at the ranch, Billie, Ike’s ally, has doubts about the Beckmere horses. Harold, a vindictive ranch hand with an axe to grind, overhears a secret conversation between Dr. Becker and his veterinarian. Rumors begin to fly that the Beckmere horses may not quite be what Dr. Becker and his friends claim them to be. Ike thinks the DNA will put these rumors to rest. Will the DNA tell the truth and save Dr. Becker and his farm as well as Ike and his career and those of his friends? And will he ever find Tuleigh?

Dick Francis aficionados will revel in each chapter’s startling discoveries and reversals of fortune. BLOOD HOAX is a page-turning mystery with as many surprising twists as a country road that is sure to please readers who love an entertaining story that will give them a ride they won’t soon forget.

About Patti Brooks – Author & Expert Equestrian

At sixteen years of age, Patti sold her first article to a national magazine for $4.00. Since then she sold five 500+ articles, mostly to equine trade journals and several national magazines like, including Good Housekeeping. Her first novel, Mountain Shadows, was published in 2003 and was required reading in a number of Adirondack high schools.

Her next novel was Fame & Deceit. Prior to writing BLOOD HOAX, she also wrote a collection of short stories, Five Minute Escapes.

Patti’s life has been as much of an action-packed adventure as her novels. She survived a plane crash in the Adirondack High Peaks and walked ten miles in sub-freezing temperatures to civilization; was struck by lightning and walked away from the ordeal; was hired as a young girl by Santa Claus to give pony rides to guests; has raced horses in the Park Harness Championship competition; jumped her horse out of a horse-sized birthday cake while a crowd of hundreds cheered her on, their champagne glasses raised in her honor. When not in the middle of the action, she loves to indulge her passion for distance riding and Morgan horses in her native Connecticut.