Race Tracks, Casinos, and Bars

There is an entire sub-genre in mysteries that revolves around race tracks and gambling milieux (and bars)

• Stephen Dobyns (Charlie Bradshaw and Victor Plotz) -- Everything takes place in Saratoga NY, which therefore makes it a real place even if you have never been there. These are the best damn horse-racing books (scams, etc.) set in the US, and compare very well with the master, Dick Francis, and with a lot more sleazy humor. Plotz, who took over recently as the lead, was a minor sleazeball in the earlier books who kind of ran away with the laurels. [Recently read Saratoga Fleshpot, a howl of a book where Vic Plotz disrupts a grand parade in a very spectacular fashion.] Vic's girlfriend, a 50-ish diner owner, is known as the Queen of Softness (har de har -- but this stuff is really funny in an understated way). Dobyns is well on the way to producing Rumpole-like classics, and he's a damn good writer.
• William Murray (Shifty Lou Anderson) -- California (Santa Anita) venue. Shifty makes his living, when not at the racetrack, performing as a magician in Holiday Inns and such places, good titles such as When the Fat Man Sings and King of the Nightcap. These are caper books and very amusing because everybody is cheating everybody else. Murray is a damn good writer too -- another Damon Runyon.
• Lawrence Block (Matthew Scudder) -- Good sleazy stuff and very nasty villains in a bar-room environment (even though Matt doesn't drink anymore and his AA involvements tend to distract from the plots). Scudder, as an unlicensed detective (ex NYPD), takes on some unredeemable clients to avenge crimes that you wouldn't even want to see Attila the Hun's family subjected to. This is probably the best Private Eye series in recent years. [He also wrote the Rhodenbar Burglar and sleepless spy Tanner series, which are quite good.]
• Dick Francis (various) -- The initiator and master of the horse-racing mystery. The early books that had ingenious race-fixing scams were the best. Nowadays it seems that he takes his big bucks (he only has to do one book a year now, with huge royalties), and goes off on a first-class cruise to learn about some new esoteric profession (investment banker, professional kidnap-ransom negotiator, engineer on the trans-Canada train, etc.) that he can write his next book about. Sid Halley is one protagonist he keeps coming back to, and he was the jockey whose hand was destroyed in a 'fixed' racing accident compounded with torture by the villains -- Dick Francis heros always get beat up in his books. [Do I somehow resent Dick Francis? I think so. He is too much at home with these rich bastards and aristos, whom I despise as types, even though (thankfully) he shows them up as villains half the time.] Good God, this man was once Queen Elizabeth's main jockey, although that doesn't put him on a par with Angel Cordero -- at least he knows everything there is to know about horses.
• Ian Fleming (James Bond) --Fleming lived the Francis life too, but obviously overdid it (killed him at an early age, unlike his hero, with those 60-cigs a day and all the martinis). But these books are incredibly atmospheric and shouldn't be forgotten. Best stuff about gambling of any kind I've ever read in this genre; Fleming was the ultimate punter (as was Bond -- Jeeze, even his undercover roles were I'll-stick-my-neck-out-and-I-bet-I-can-still-win propositions). [Fleming was a snob too, like Francis, but he knew about the good life and I sort of envy that: I dream about Aston-Martins and the wonderful smell of horse shit sometimes, and then have to wake up to reality.]
• Ross Thomas (Oliver Bleeck) Some very fine 'caper/scam' novels, mostly political, but they involve bars sometimes (especially the McCorkle ones). This guy weaves wonderful plots about people scamming and betraying and often slaying each other. He is especially good at portraying politicians and lobbyists. His heroes are cynical rogues; you side with them from the very beginning.
• Carl Hiaasen Absolutely grotesque books set in the sleazy depths of Florida (compare these with the more serious, but also more politically correct Travis McGee and Matthew Hope books).