Ned Talbot’s slogan is “Trust Teddy Talbot”. It is on a sign at the top of his board advertising the odds on the horses about to run in the current horse race. Ned is a bookmaker. His father was a bookmaker and his grandfather was a bookmaker. Ned was always told that his father and mother both died in a car accident when he was just three years old. Ned was raised by his grandparents and he stood next to his grandfather at the track learning the art of bookmaking from the age of a toddler. Now at 37 years old Ned is visited while doing his business at the track by a man who says he is his long lost father.
Of course Ned is skeptical but after lots of questions about the past Ned becomes convinced that it is in fact his father. However, before he can get to know the man disaster strikes. Ned is loading up his bookmaking equipment when a strange man wearing a hoodie to cover his face runs up and kicks Ned in the face then demands of his father “Where is the money?” Ned, thinking he is being robbed, not unusual for a bookie, offers the envelope containing his winnings for the day at the track. The man ignores Ned asking again of his father, “Where is the money?” Ned’s father tells the man to “go to hell” and then kicks him in the groin. All he gets for his trouble is a fatal stabbing in the stomach two times. So now Ned is without a father again.
Not only does Ned lose his father but he learns from the police that his father strangled his mother long ago before running off to Australia.
Ned tracks down the seedy room by the tube station that his father had rented and manages to get his baggage before the police can get around to it. Ned finds 30,000 pounds and a remote control with ten rice sized electronic chips. He later learns that these chips are coded and implanted under the skin of a racehorse to ensure that the horse is who the owner claims it is and not a “ringer”.
He also discovers that Ned, along with an accomplice, with the alias of “Paddy Murphy” have been killing substitutes for winning horses with older horses and claiming big insurance payouts for the thoroughbred. Then winning lots of money racing the thoroughbred under another name. They had been implanting phony electronic tags in their “ringers”; a scheme that was very lucrative for them.
In tracking down all this mystery Ned becomes involved in activities that the big gambling organizations don’t like and he gets beat up a couple of times. In addition to his under-world adventures and danger Ned’s wife is mentally ill and is in and out of the hospital over and over giving Ned lots more stress. He really loves his Sophie and needs her to be well on her new medications. Ned also learns after a couple of visits with his old grandmother who has Alzheimer’s disease that it was really his grandfather who had strangled his mother because he had gotten her pregnant and needed to get rid of her to keep his affair from ruining their lives. What a mess for Ned.
Ned is stubborn and instead of selling out his little operation as the big guys were trying to get him to do so that he would stop looking into their shady dealings, Ned decided to get even with them. He worked out a scheme to disable the internet and swamp the cell phones in the area of the track with a white noise machine just prior to the favorite of the day running. By placing large bets on the favorite they would reduce the odds on the favorite but the big shops couldn’t get to the computers to change their bets to cover themselves and they were obligated to pay out at the original odds. Ned used the 30,000 pounds given out to a bunch of juveniles at 200 pounds each to bet heavily on the high odds horse. Ned’s horse won and he collected over 600,000 pounds. The big guys didn’t like it but they had no choice but to pay.
With his winnings Ned and his wife took a trip to Australia where his father had been living where Ned had two sisters he had never met. There was a tearful union with the sisters and Ned learned that his wife is pregnant, a very happy thing and a very pleasant ending to their rough times. One is sure that good times will roll into the future for Ned and Sophie.
“Even Money” is a fast paced tale full of little surprises. It is sometimes humorous and always has us rooting for the little man. I rate it an 8 of 10 on the Weaver meter.
