September 24, 2018
A colorless lead and a tacked-on romantic subplot mar Francis’s unmemorable eighth novel set in the English horse racing world chronicled by his father (after 2017’s Pulse). Small-town lawyer Harry Foster gets a new lease on life when he lands a position with Simpson White Consultancy, a crisis management firm. Despite Foster’s complete ignorance about horses, he’s dispatched to Newmarket to represent the interests of Sheikh Ahmed Karim, a charismatic Arab king who has “made lasting peace” in the Middle East. The sheikh’s prize horse, Prince of Troy, who was expected to easily win the Derby, died in a fire that also killed six other colts. Foster is charged with ascertaining whether the blaze was accidental or arson, a task that becomes trickier when the body of an unidentified woman, who was dead before the fire started, is found in the stables where the animals were housed. The lawyer’s efforts aren’t appreciated by either the police or members of the dysfunctional Chadwick family, who were responsible for training and caring for Prince of Troy. The clichéd denouement lacks the younger Francis’s usual inventiveness. Fans will hope for a return to form next time. Agent: Ed Wilson, Johnson & Alcock (U.K.).
October 15, 2018
Francis' latest attempt to find a new approach to skulduggery in the world of horse racing revolves around a hero who'd rather be anywhere else than solving a surprisingly old-fashioned whodunit."I know nothing about horse racing," Harrison Foster announces on Page 1. But that doesn't matter to Sheikh Ahmed Karim bin Mohamed Al Hamadi, a client of Simpson White Consultancy, the crisis-management firm Harry works for. A fire at Newmarket's Castleton House Stables has taken the lives of seven horses, one of them Prince of Troy, the prohibitive Derby favorite Sheikh Karim had owned, and the wealthy client wants to learn everything he can about how the fire got started. Ignoring his asthma and his antipathy to horses, Harry travels to Newmarket, where he interviews Oliver Chadwick, the patriarch of Castleton House, and his sons, Declan and Tony. Chadwick's only daughter, Zoe, isn't available to speak to Harry because, as it turns out, she was also in the stable that caught fire. Bypassing cautious Superintendent Bennett and DCI Eastwood, who want to tread softly till they've ruled out the possibility that the blaze was accidental, Harry resolves to dig deeper, and a good thing too. Soon enough, Declan, arrested for Zoe's murder, engages a dazed Harry as his attorney, and his wife, Arabella, hangs herself after leaving behind a cryptic note: "It will all come out. I can't stand the shame." The adventures that await Harry range from his sudden romance with auctioneer Kate Williams to the fulfillment of his worst nightmare when he's locked in a dark barn with a very unstable horse before he plucks the culprit from the depths of the deeply dysfunctional Chadwick family.Even if all the leading suspects are so despicable that it's hard to generate much interest in which of them is guilty of murder, Francis (Pulse, 2017, etc.) continues to work unexpected and welcome changes on the racing franchise he inherited from his father.
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Starred review from October 15, 2018
Felix Francis has a string of winning equestrian mysteries, including his latest, which continues the run he began by coauthoring four novels with his father, Dick Francis, the late champion steeplechase jockey turned award-winning mystery writer, who died in 2010. This time out, Francis improvises to great effect on the theme introduced by Robert Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land (1961); here, though, the strange land is the intricate world of caring for, breeding, running, and trading valuable Thoroughbreds. When the favorite for the British Epsom Derby, Prince of Troy, is destroyed in a stable fire, Harry Foster, legal consultant specializing in crisis management for a London firm, is called to Newmarket to investigate, despite his knowing nothing?and caring less?about horses. It's fascinating to watch Harry, whose lack of horse knowledge is offset by his expertise in handling crises, dig into the workings of the family who own the stables and have long dominated British horse racing. When the remains of a human body are discovered in the stables, the mystery expands into examining family conflicts and years of exploiting and mistreating stable workers. As the investigation grows more and more intense, readers will appreciate the wealth of fascinating facts Francis' hero learns (for example, all horses in the Northern Hemisphere have their birthday on January 1, no matter when they were actually born). Another trip to the winner's circle for the talented Francis.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)