DICK FRANCIS'S DAMAGE

A professional horse-racing investigator has to ride three unruly mounts at once in the fourth and most ambitious of the younger Francis’ suspensers.

It’s always something for Jefferson Roosevelt Hinkley. Since the ace investigator and his British Horseracing Authority colleague Nigel Green are shadowing banned horse trainer Matthew Unwin at the Cheltenham racetrack, they’re on hand when Unwin stabs bookmaker Jordan Furness to death right before their eyes, landing them both in a legal quagmire and Jeff perhaps in even deeper trouble. Then eminent barrister Quentin Calderfield, the husband of Jeff’s cancer-stricken sister, Faye, wants Jeff to find and neutralize the witness who testified that Quentin’s son Kenneth offered to sell him some of the crystal meth the coppers found in Ken’s place during a wild party. But Jeff’s third case is by far the biggest and nastiest. An extortionist calling himself Leonardo has doped dozens of horses running at the Cheltenham Festival and threatens to keep causing wholesale trouble for the rest of the season, undermining the BHA’s authority and bringing the racing industry to its knees, unless the Authority pays him £5 million to go away. Ignoring Jeff, who urges them to call the police, the BHA directors charge him with identifying and exposing the extortionist. They provide no budget and no manpower to help him and fire him to boot to make whatever cover story he dreams up more convincing—and incidentally to provide themselves some deniability if anything should go wrong.

Francis (Dick Francis’s Refusal, 2013, etc.) expertly choreographs Jeff’s extended cat-and-mouse duel with the resourceful Leonardo. Fans of both thrillers and horse racing will be on tenterhooks until Jeff unmasks his opponent, who turns out to have been a lot more memorable in disguise.