Wild Horses

Allison Willoughby has never had much luck with men, but Boyd Dobbins, the ace card-mechanic Casanova, is in a class by himself. He’s a sleaze and a cheater who may be every bit as handsome as he thinks he is, but only half as smart. When Allison’s finally had enough, she grabs her bag and hits the nearest road out of Vegas. Like a rolling stone, no direction home, no plans for tomorrow … and no idea she’s carrying the only key to seven hundred fifty grand in skimmed casino cash.But Boyd knows it. So does Madeline DeCarlo, the over-the-hill showgirl-turned-crooked pit boss with killer legs and the soul of Lizzie Borden. And so does Gunther Manzetti, the chromosomally-challenged psycho mob-enforcer whose favorite method of persuasion involves the creative application of Crystal Drano. They’re all after the unsuspecting Allison, who has decided to head east and, after a lifetime of running away, confront the man whose abuse nearly destroyed her as a child: her father. It’s only hours before the bodies begin to pile up.Caper, chase, mission of retribution and day of reckoning: These are the threads that intertwine to weave this high-energy, fiercely intelligent thriller, as it rips across the mythically vibrant American Southwest like a vicious twister, leaving wreckage in its wake and racing toward a bloody Mississippi showdown.Allison is a strong, sympathetic woman in the direst straits since Joan of Arc, but can take care of herself with a vengeance, and she’s surrounded by as savage and whacked-out a cast of oddballs, eccentrics, and sickos as ever dreamed up by the likes of David Lynch. Yes, there’s plenty of violence and sex and mayhem, but there’s also uproarious humor, richly evocative writing, and deeply probed emotional truths.It’s all delivered in taut, lean-and-mean prose, and careens along like a vintage big-engined Caddy with the top down and the pedal through the metal. Buckle up and revel in the fresh, irresistibly wild-at-heart ride that is Wild Horses.

From Publishers Weekly

Extending the arc that has led him increasingly away from the horror content of his early '90s novels, Hodge (Prototype) serves up a soulful crime drama that blends the comic and macabre. When Las Vegas day-care worker Allison Willoughby discovers that her blackjack dealer boyfriend Boyd is cheating on her, she packs her bags and, out of spite, empties the hard drive of his laptop onto floppies, then erases the hard drive and sends the box to Mississippi with her belongings. Big mistake. Those disks contain access codes for accounts where Boyd has stashed three-quarters of a million dollars that he and aging showgirl Madeline DeCarlo have skimmed from casino profits. Oblivious to the turmoil that ensues, Allison embarks on a redemptive cross-country odyssey during which she comes to terms with her sexually abusive father and meets soulmate Thomas St. John. Fumbling in bloody pursuit are the double-crossing Boyd, and the double-crossed Madeline, whose new lover, cold-blooded hit man Gunther Manzetti, adds the requisite, but uniquely characterized, psychotic loose-cannon element to the loopy gang of money-grubbers. Hodge's plotting is routine and his prose often too lyrical for the tale's more hard-boiled moments. (Of two women having a fistfight, he writes, "They flung each other out the door to land beneath the stars above this desert town where dreams and old dogs came to die"). But his well-drawn criminals make a memorable batch of bottom-feeders, particularly the eerie Gunther, who spends his time expanding his vocabulary and dispatching victims with Drano. Hodge orchestrates their foibles with a conviction that almost makes you believe, as they do, that there are sermons in bathroom graffiti and that the most outrageous twists of fate are the credible dividends of Vegas odds. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Despite a plot littered with gamblers, con men, and violence, Wild Horses is a quest for the good life and a study of human relationships. We meet thirtysomething Allison Willoughby in Las Vegas as she is about to discover her current lover's infidelity. Quickly bidding Boyd adieu by smashing a potted cactus on his car, she embarks on a cross-country trek unaware that she possesses computer files worth $700,000 to Boyd; his pit boss paramour, Madeline; and her thug boyfriend, Gunther. Hodge's savvy depiction of modern life's underbelly recalls the work of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen. His pace is quick, the action tough and dirty. In contrast, he employs an amazingly delicate touch when depicting the vulnerable aspects of his characters. Best of all, the escapades of this motley band of players speak directly to anyone who has longed to tread a riskier path.-?Nancy McNicol, Hagaman Memorial Lib., East Haven, CTCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A debut thriller that hits the road with a cast of characters only Charles Addams could love, all of them in hot pursuit of $750,000 skimmed off the top of a Vegas blackjack table. Allison Willoughby had the universe figured out by the time she was twenty-five, the last six years serving only to reinforce her understanding. Which basically means: the girl just refuses to learn. The latest example is Allisons discovery of her boyfriend Boyd Dobbins in flagrante with a woman a good deal older and lessshall we say?appealing than herself. Some mysteries are just too disgusting to work out, so Allison does the normal thing and blows town. But, unbeknownst to her, Boyds real lust had been financial rather than carnal: a blackjack dealer at a Vegas casino, he had been embezzling table receipts with the connivance of his boss Madeleine DeCarlo, and Maddy had demanded that part of her cut be paid, well, in kind. Not that Boyd is any kind of angel, of course, but the fact is that Allison leaves him in deep trouble by disappearing, since she unknowingly takes with her the only key Boyd has to recovering the loot from its Cayman Island home. This makes Maddy mad as hell, of course, since she naturally suspects that Boyd double-crossed her. She teams up with her unsavory friend Gunther, a Mafia dropout who has discovered some inventive uses for Drano, and tries to get the truth out of Boyd. Fortunately, Boyd has the help of Krystal Lyte, a Vegas call-girl with a heart of gold and a knack for dropping by just in the nick of time. The two of them soon head of in pursuit of Allisona chase that leads through the febrile wastes of Texas into the humid wastes of Yazoo City, Mississippi, with Maddy and Gunther never far behind. Taut prose, good action, and a crisp pace add up to a good read: Hodge draws characters with the texture of Daumierand the imagination of LeFanu. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From the Inside Flap

In Las Vegas, anything goes. So when Allison discovers her blackjack dealer boyfriend has a cheatin’ heart, “hit me” takes on a whole new meaning. She clobbers Boyd with a cactus. Then she trashes his prized money-skimming scam, swipes his only records of an off-shore bank account (the key to a fortune) without realizing it, and blows town. Big mistake. Because Boyd has a partner: an aging showgirl still young enough to scheme. Not happy with her cut, this redhead wants revenge–and she knows a cold-blooded killer who will help her get it. Meanwhile, Boyd has found solace with a new-age hooker who cares about Boyd’s karma more than his money. Now the whole brawling, balling, hurting tangle of friends, traitors, and lovers is going on the road. In separate cars. Leaving behind a trail of broken bodies and broken laws, they’re all following Allison. And she’s following a devious plan of her own. . . .

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

She should have known eight months ago, when they moved to Las Vegas, that it was a mistake, the stuff of which rough roads and blood dots were made. Omens filled the air that day. A freak storm showered down that afternoon, to send tourists and natives alike into disgruntled fits of despair, unnoticed only by the most inveterate gamblers at their tables. Worse, a throat infection kept Wayne Newton off stage that evening, plunging Boyd into a deep indigo funk that lingered for days.Wayne Newton. Just which level of Dante's Hell had she fallen into here? To Allison, root canal sounded more appealing, but it had meant a lot to Boyd: Wayne Newton, throwing down big tips for watery drinks, doing the whole tacky Vegas routine up and down the Strip for one grand evening before settling in as residents and Boyd's dream job of blackjack dealer extraordinaire -- his way of announcing to Nevada at large, "We have arrived!" The master plan ruined, then, courtesy of a strep infection.Secretly, she had rejoiced."If we'd moved here twenty-five years ago," Boyd lamented, "I bet we'd've killed Elvis ahead of schedule."Allison recalled frowning. "We were only six years old at the time," she'd said, but she knew what he meant. Some people carried with them their very own plagues, wherever they went.Typhoid Boyd -- it had a ring to it.He'd proposed a few weeks later, the presence of all those quickie wedding chapels eating away at his oversexed brain. She'd had the good sense to say no... not yet, at least, an amendment sutured on only to soothe the sting of rejection while she hoped Boyd would otherwise forget all about it.Love should figure somewhere into the equation, of this she was certain and with equal certainty Allison Willoughby knew that she didn't love Boyd. Was unsure she'd ever loved anyone who had stood much over four feet tall. There had been no shortage of opportunity during her fourteen years on the run from Mississippi, most of the men arrayed in a stepping-stone succession that implied a monogamous disposition. But each had been, admittedly, a stopgap measure to fill intermittent gaps in her life; there was something just too horrible about living alone for very long.Paradoxically, apartments seemed noisier when they weren't shared. She would lie awake at night, listening to creaks and pops surrounding her, each made by a footfall from long ago, when eager breaths once whispered like an ill wind. Every shadow evoked the ghost of a visitor whose face remained as sharp as a razor's cut; they had come to her nocturnally, those visitors, with numbing frequency and intentions she'd not wholly understood, knowing only there was pain and shame involved.After a time she'd not even needed faces anymore; could tell them apart from smell alone, variations on a shared group scent that could even today make her gag whenever she caught a whiff of anyone too similar. The fermented testosterone stink washing down from above had been heavier than their bodies.Of course she'd never told Boyd any of this. A guy like Boyd, give him a little leverage, sooner or later he'd have to use it.That Vegas mentality again.No wonder he was doing so well here.When after nine months together she noticed signs that Boyd was exploring options elsewhere, it came as no surprise. Allison had long recognized that women were to Boyd Dobbins's soul what oxygen was to his lungs, and should someone put a gun to his head demanding he give up one or the other, he'd honestly need time to think it over. Women were goddesses, and Boyd overflowed with undying worship.To hear him tell it, she was the loveliest woman on earth -- maybe of all time. Her hair was spun flax, and her eyes emeralds. Her nose was perfectly buttoned, the dusting of freckles across her cheekbones adorably childlike, given lie only by those taut haunches and belly, shoulders and breasts. A daily litany, this; she had become the sacrament of his new religion. Meanwhile, the mirror showed her the crinkled birth of crow's-feet around her eyes and a tush that screamed for longer rides on her bicycle. It cost Boyd credibility, left Allison feeling it was inevitable that he would fall for the charms of a goddess more radiant still.As Boyd so obviously had.The perfume scent clinging to him when he came back late each night from the casino was a simple matter to brush aside: He dealt winning hands to bouncy, squealing women -- was he supposed to fight them off when they wanted to hug him? Not when the objective was to keep them at the table long enough to lose their winnings back. Yet what were the odds these affectionate women were, night after night, all wearing the same scent?And he'd also been leaving earlier each day. Not that she'd ordinarily be likely to notice. His shift began at four in the afternoon, overlapping hers at Gingerbread House Day Care by two hours. One day's chance failure to raise him on the phone before he left turned into a second, then a third, and a pattern was established. It was getting to be a game -- pin the tail on Boyd.

About the Author

Brian Hodge hails from Illinois and now lives in Boulder, Colorado.

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