Shattered [Paperback]

Few writers can lay claim to having made a genre entirely their own, but the racing thriller remains unassailably Dick Francis territory. And Shattered, as smoothly crafted a piece of entertainment as anything he has produced, is a reminder that despite various pretenders to the throne, he retains his crown--even the kafuffle regarding the authorship of his books (his wife apparently lent a hand at times) only increased his profile, with readers seemingly indifferent to this revelation. What is his secret? Primarily, of course, it's the author's finely honed narrative skills that immediately mark him out as a master entertainer--thrillers such as Rat Race, Smokescreen and Trial Run bristle with energy and momentum. The ace in the hole is that satisfying sense of insider knowledge in his plots, however implausible they are. Shattered once again conveys that the equestrian world is quite as dangerous as Colin Dexter's Groves of Academe: jockey Martin Stukely dies after a fall in a steeplechase at Cheltenham races, and his friend, artist Gerald Logan, finds that the dead man has a connection to a stolen videotape with mysterious (and highly valuable) contents. Logan is more familiar with the problems of glass-blowing than violence and extortion, but he is soon undergoing a crash course in survival techniques as some very malignant heavies target him.

The protagonist of Shattered is only peripherally connected with the racing world, and this broader palette has resulted in a signal recharging of the batteries. The lean, unfussy narrative has the customary race-to-the-tape motion, but Logan is a nicely judged semi-hero, convincingly at sea (as most of us would be) in very dangerous waters. And, as always, the prose makes its mark with a commendable directness:

The horse fell at the peak of his forward-to-win acceleration and crashed down at thirty or more miles an hour. Winded, he lay across the jockey for inert moments, then rocked back and forwards vigorously in his struggle to rise to his feet. The fall and its aftermath looked truly terrible from where I watched on the stands and the racecourse doctor, though instantly attending him from his following car, couldn't prevent the fast gathering group of paramedics and media people from realising that Martin Stukely, though semi-conscious, was dying before their eyes. They glimpsed the blood frothing out of the jockey's mouth, choking him as the sharp ends of broken ribs tore his lungs apart.

--Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Dick Francis's fiction has a secret ingedient - his inimitable knack of grabbing the reader's attention on page one and holding tight to the very end' Sunday Telegraph

When jockey Martin Stukely dies following a fall at Cheltenham, his friend Gerard Logan becomes embroiled in a perilous search for a stolen videotape. Logan, half artist, half artisan, is a glass blower on the verge of widespread acclaim for the originality and ingenuity of his work. Long accustomed to the frightful dangers inherent in molten glass and in maintaining a glass-making furnace at never less than eighteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit, Logan is suddenly faced with a series of unexpected and terrifying new threats to his business, his courage and his life. Believing the missing video tape to hold some sort of key to a priceless treasure, and wrongly convinced that Logan knows where to find it, a group of villains sets out to force from him the information he doesn't have. Narrowly escaping these attacks, Logan reckons that to survive he must himself find out the truth. The journey is thorny, and the final race to the tape throws more hurdles and more hazards in Logan's way than his dead jockey friend could ever have imagined. Glass shatters. Logan doesn't . . . but it's a close run thing.

Dick Francis has written forty international bestsellers and is widely acclaimed as one of the world's finest thriller writers. In 1996 Dick Francis was made a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master for a lifetime's achievement.

It was at the last fence of all that Tallahassee uncharacteristically tangled his feet. Easily ahead by seven lengths he lost his concentration, hit the roots of the unyielding birch and turned a somersault over his rider, landing his whole half-ton mass upside down with the saddle-tree and his withers crushing the rib cage of the man beneath.

The horse fell at the peak of his forward-to-win acceleration and crashed down at thirty or more miles an hour. Winded, he lay across the jockey for inert moments, then rocked back and forwards vigorously in his struggle to rise again to his feet.

The fall and its aftermath looked truly terrible from where I watched on the stands. The roar of welcome for a favourite racing home to a popular win was hushed to a gasp, to cries, to an endless anxious murmur. The actual winner passed the post without his due cheers and thousand pairs of binoculars focused on the unmoving black and white chevrons flat on the green December grass.

The racecourse doctor, though instantly attending him from his following car, couldn't prevent the fast gathering group of paramedics and media people from realising that Martin Stukely, though still semi-conscious, was dying before their eyes. They glimpsed the blood sliding frothily out of the jockey's moth, choking him as the sharp ends of broken ribs tore his lungs apart. They described it, cough by groan, in their news reports.

The doctor and paramedics loaded martin just alive into the waiting ambulance and as they set off to the hospital they worked desperately with transfusions and oxygen, but quietly, before the journey ended, the jockey lost his race.
Priam, not normally a man of emotion, wept without shame as later he collected Martin's belongings, including his car keys, from the changing rooms. Sniffing, blowing his nose, and accompanied by Lloyd Baxter who looked annoyed rather than grief-stricken, Priam Jones offered to return me to my place of business in Broadway, though not to my home in the hills, as he intended to go in the opposite direction from there, to see Bon-Bon; to give her comfort.

I asked if he would take me on with him to see Bon-Bon. He refused. Bon-Bon wanted Priam alone, he said. She had said so, devastated, on the telephone.

Lloyd Baxter, Priam added, would now also be offloaded at Broadway. Priam had got him the last available room in the hotel there, the Wychwood Dragon. It was all arranged.

Lloyd Baxter glowered at the world, at his trainer, at me, at fate. He should, he thought, have won the gold trophy. He had been robbed. Though is horse was unharmed, his feelings for his dead jockey seemed to be resentment, not regret.

As Priam, shoulders drooping, and Baxter, frowning heavily, set off ahead of us towards the car park, martin's changing-room valet hurried after me, calling my name. I stopped, and turned towards him, and into my hands he thrust the lightweight racing saddle that, strapped firmly to Tallahassee's back, had helped to deal out damage and death.

The stirrups, with the leathers, were folded over the saddle plate, and were kept in place by the long girth wound round and round. The sight of the girth-wrapped piece of professional equipment, like my newly dead mother's Hasselblad camera, bleakly rammed into one's consciousness the gritty message that their owners would never come back. It was Martin's empty saddle that set me missing him painfully.

Eddie, the valet, was elderly, bald and, in Martin's estimation, hardworking and unable to do wrong. He turned to go back to the changing room but then stopped, fumbled in the deep front pocket of the apron of his trade and, producing a brown-paper-wrapped package, called after me to wait.

'Someone gave this to Martin to give to you,' he shouted, coming back and holding it out for me to take. 'Martin asked me to give it back to him when he was leaving to go home, so he could pass it on to you ... but of course ...' he swallowed, his voice breaking ... 'he's gone.'

I asked. 'Who gave it to him?'

The valet didn't know. He was sure, though, that Martin himself had known, because he had been joking about it being worth a million, and Eddie was clear that the ultimate destination of the parcel had been Gerard Logan, Martin's friend.

I took the package and, thanking him, put it into my raincoat pocket, and we spent a mutual moment of sharp sadness for the gap we already felt in our lives. I supposed, as Eddie turned to hurry back to his chores in the changing room and I continued into the car park, that I might have gone to the races for the last time, that without Martin's input the fun might have flown.

Piram's tears welled up again at the significance of the empty saddle and Lloyd Baxter shook his head with disapproval. Priam recovered enough however to start Martins' car and drive it to Broadway where, as he'd intended, he off-loaded both me and Lloyd Baxter outside the Wychwood Dragon and then departed in speechless gloom towards Bon-Bon and her fatherless brood.

Lloyd Baxter paid me not attention but strode without pleasure into the hotel. During the journey from the racecourse he'd complained to Priam that his overnight bag was in Priam's house. He'd gone by hired car from Staverton airfield, intending to spend the evening at Priam's now-cancelled New Year's Eve party, celebrating a win in the Gold Coffee Cup before flying away the following morning to his thousand-acre estate in Northumberland. Priam's assertion that, after seeing Martin's family, he would himself ferry the bag to the hotel, left Tallahassee's owner unmollified. The whole afternoon had been a disaster, he grumbled, and in his voice one could hear undertones of an intention to change to a different trainer. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.