A Literary Parallel
In 1988 — long before the arrest of Tommy Burns and the subsequent unraveling of the horse murders conspiracy of silence — "Brat Pack" novelist Jay McInerney based a roman à clef novel, titled Story of My Life, on the young adulthood of his former girlfriend Lisa Druck, James Druck's daughter. McInerney's novel implies that the cause of protagonist Alison Poole's "party girl" behavior is her father's abuse, including the murder of her prize jumping horse.
McInerney has said that he chose to write about Druck and her friends because he was both "intrigued and appalled" by their behavior, and the lead character, Alison Poole, who was closely modeled after Druck, was described as "an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year old." Story of My Life opens with Alison Poole's description of her father and her seemingly casual comment that she gave up riding when her horse — called "Dangerous Dan" in the story — suddenly "dropped dead," details that closely parallel Lisa Druck's early life.
| “ | I'm like, I don't believe this shit. … buys his new bimbo Tanya who's a year younger than me a 450 SL convertible — always gone for the young ones, haven't we, Dad? — plus her own condo … My old man is fifty going on twelve. … Nothing my father does surprises me anymore. … My parents have seven marriages between them … Acting is the first thing I ever really wanted to do. Except for riding. When I was a kid I spent most of my time on horseback. I went around the country showing my horses and jumping, until Dangerous Dan dropped dead. I loved Dan more than just about any living thing since and that was it for me and horses. | ” |
In the novel, Allison Poole's horse is poisoned, not electrocuted, but at the end of the story, the orchestrator of the murder, just as in Druck's actual life, is revealed to have been the young woman's father:
| “ | I loved that horse. ... When he was poisoned I went into shock. They kept me on tranquilizers for a week. There was an investigation — nothing came of it. The insurance company paid off in full, but I quit riding. A few months later, Dad came into my bedroom one night. I was like, uh-oh, not this again. He buried his face in my shoulder. His cheek was wet and he smelled of booze. I'm sorry about Dangerous Dan, he said. Tell me you forgive me. | ” |
There was open speculation that Story of My Life was a roman à clef novel when it first appeared; to New York Magazine's questions "Is it real? Did it happen?" McInerney replied, "I'm anticipating some of that kind of speculation, but I'm utterly confident of not having any lawsuits on my hands. The book is a fully imagined work of fiction. On the other hand, it's not to say that I didn't make use of … That's why I live in New York. Mine is not an autonomous imagination."
McInerney's references to the horse murder conspiracy went unremarked by sports journalists or the general media at the time of the novel's publication, because the scandal itself had not yet come to light in the national press, but the novel received renewed interest in the wake of the Edwards-Hunter extramarital affair. In August 2008, Vintage Books ordered an additional 2,500 copies of the book in the wake of the interest generated by the Hunter-Edwards scandal.
Read more about this topic: Horse Murders
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