Word: theron
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...Theron's life veers sharply away from academic drudgery when he happens to stumble on a drunken bum in a bathroom stall at Suffolk Downs. The derelict tells him to bet on "Jesus Saves," and for the hell of it. Theron puts $250 on the filly at 127 to I odds-- and suddenly finds himself up $31,000, or "half again what [he] earned in a year." Wesley College, "according to its own smug formula, paid part in money and part in prestige...
...horse may have been a lucky tip but suddenly Theron's luck takes a turn for the worse. As it turns out, the bum in the bathroom was Jesus Saves's trainer--and has died of poisoning shortly after tipping off Theron. Soon the young professor is being tracked by mobsters and sleeping in his office (in a building described remarkably similarly to Warren House) to avoid hired killers...
Forced to unravel the web mobster, cultists, and horseracing in which he finds himself, Theron follows the trail to a bordello in New Hampshire and the dark offices of head Boston mobster Vincent Ciullo...
...masterfully-drawn character, Ciullo prefers discussing Ezra Pound, American fiction, and Theron's chances of winning tenure of the necessary task of forcefully obtaining the young academic' cooperation...
...gain Theron's cooperation he does, and the trail which Theron, accompanied by Ciullo's loyal henchman Gerald, winds through the bars and nightclubs of the Combat Zone allows for some extremely entertaining. If slightly contrived, scenes, Scandalously, the trial eventually points towards Stephan Kenan, a professor emeritus of English at Wesley...