BOLT

Kit Fielding, the rather colorless jockey-hero of Francis' last novel, Break In, returns—in a limp sequel that features a cardboard super-villain, no mystery whatsoever, and only sporadic flickers of genuine action-excitement. Princess Casilia, the grande dame horse-owner who employs Kit, is in a terrible state—because her elderly husband Roland, part-owner of a French plastics factory, is being harassed by his evil co-owner, Henri Nanterre, who wants to manufacture guns. Roland nobly loathes the idea, of course, refusing to acquiesce—even when two of the dear Princess' favorite horses are found dead in their stalls, killed with a "humane" bolt-gun. So it's up to Kit to protect the Princess and her family from Nanterre's blackmail and dastardly attacks: Roland's niece Danielle (Kit's fiancÉe) is pursued by a hooded assailant; Casilia's nephew, Prince Litsi (who might be wooing Danielle away), walks into a booby trap at the race track, nearly falling to his death. And eventually, after coming to the rescue in each and every case, Kit traps the cartoonish Nanterre. demobilizing him—though the Princess' horses will remain in danger until a second monstrous villain (from Kit's past') is finished off permanently. The disjointed plot here has none of the pace and form of Francis at his best—or second-best for that matter. Kit's romantic frettings about Danielle and Litsi are soggy filler; the sentimentality throughout, in fact, seems uncharacteristically forced. And the derring-do (none of it on horseback) is only fitfully suspenseful. Still, it's all blandly readable—and that may be enough, along with the racecourse background, for loyal fans.