BANKER

Don't let that title worry you: there's plenty about horses in Francis' new mystery—which offers one of his best plots in years. The narrator this rime, rather less appealing than other Francis heroes, is young London banker-merchant Tim Ekaterin. But Francis manages to make Tim's loan-department work thoroughly engaging: the office politics, the excitement of seeing a risky loan pay off (as with a cartoonist/animator whom Tire believes in). And one particular loan soon dominates: the bank, on Tim's recommendation, lends stud-farmer Oliver Knowles the $5 million pounds to buy racing-stallion Sandcastle. (Intriguing details on the mechanics and economics of star horse-breeding abound.) Tire befriends Knowles and his adorable teenage daughter Ginnie; he makes friends in the horse-world—including Calder Jackson, a charismatic "healer" of horses who has brought several incurable animals back to health. But then everything turns sour: a veterinarian acquaintance is murdered; over half of Sandcastle's first crop of foals are born dead or deformed; Knowles faces ruin; dear Ginnie is also murdered. So Tire, with help from a pharmacologist friend, starts piecing things together (most readers will be slightly ahead of him). . . and winds up in an ordeal/confrontation with the vi/lain. Francis tends toward the saccharine here and there, especially with Tim's love-lire. (He longs for the wife of a beloved colleague—and gets her in a mushily contrived fadeout.) The whole book, in fact, could have used some editorial tightening. But, if not in a class with early/great Francis, this is several lengths ahead of almost everybody else: a lively, amazingly fresh blend of horse-talk, money-talk, medicine, action. . . and sentiment.