Finishes strong. One of the villains was very predictable but still other unanticipated things happened. The glass business was interesting. Not a page-turner but with enough Francis class to be worth reading.

I'm a great fan of Dick Francis, know I have to have an early night, because I won't put the book down until it's finished. This was no exception, and although horse racing is involved on the fringe I learnt a bit about glass blowing & modelling which was interesting.

Dick Francis is one of my cozy mystery favorites

4 Stars

Shattered by Dick Francis is a tense crime & investigation murder mystery, with suspense, danger, a horse racing accident, a stolen videotape, high stakes, tension, dramatic developments, and more.
->2023 Reading Challenge.
->Glennie's Collection
Dick Francis novels were a familiar fixture in our household when I was growing up, as both my parents loved his books. He was amongst the first ‘adult’ reads that I explored at the time, and over the years I have read everything he’s written. I remember every time my mother read one of his books, she'd tell me about him and how he'd gone from being an RAF pilot to being the Queen Mother's favourite jockey, before retiring to become a journalist/writer.
Since my mother passed away over a year ago, I have been making my way through her book collection, finally. I decided to make reading her entire collection a part of my reading challenge for the next couple of years (she has a HUGE collection), as well as a way to pay tribute to my mum, who was such a voracious reader..... Reading her collection of books has stirred up a lot of memories, mostly of our shared love of reading. I am forever grateful that she passed on her love of reading to me.

Love his style and amount of personal story woven into a mystery. Glass blowing is certainly any interesting focus too!

Just fine. Not a 4 or 5, but not necessarily a 1 or 2. Even though it was easy to read and relatively short, it took me forever to read because it was kind of slow. The plot was a little confusing at times with too many characters that I had a difficult time distinguishing, but I think the author did a good job of wrapping everything up in a way that made sense towards the end, with enough recap for someone who read the book over the span of several months. An unnecessary side romance that didn’t do too much for me, but also didn’t take away from the plot I guess.
Plot: A scientist steals cancer research from his work, and gives the video tape with the secrets to his acquaintance, who is a jockey. His jockey friend entrusts the tape to his glass blower friend, to keep it away from his children, and he also does not know that the tape has stolen secrets. Jockey dies on racetrack. A horse trainer/buyer (?) swaps the tape out with another tape of just horse racing because he thinks it’s a tape that has the location of a priceless necklace. He finds medical mumbo jumbo on it that he doesn’t understand so he just puts the medical tape in the jockey’s car. The glassblower receives the horse racing tape but never has a chance to watch it because his shop gets robbed. Rose, her father Eddie, her henchman Roman, and a hired hit man (ends up being the main character’s assistant glassblower Hickory) rob the shop and beat him up to get the tape’s location because the tape they stole was just horse racing. He doesn’t know, gets saved by Tom Pigeon and his Dobermans. Main character had made a video tape on how to replicate a priceless glass necklace and had let his jockey friend borrow it. Jockey friend was considering asking him to make the necklace for his wife and was generally interested in friend’s glassmaking. The bad people end up robbing the jockey friend’s house, and they steal all of his video tapes. Hickory found the video tape of how to make the necklace and because he is a less talented and severely insecure glassblower, he kept it, because he believed he could replicate it. Main character goes through several other run-ins where he is beat or threatened because everybody wants to know where the medical tape worth a lot of money is. Ends with a big fight in the studio where Rose accidentally burns Hickory’s ear, her boyfriend the scientist Adam Force’s face, and kills main character’s girlfriend (cop) Catherine’s partner Paul. The place that Force worked at ends up getting the medical research from the tape back, and the main character finds the videotape on how to make the necklace in Hickory‘s locker. Main character ends up with Catherine, and all of the bad guys get arrested.

Loved the dive into the art of glassblowing -- quite fascinating. Didn't love the confusing, far-fetched plot involving videotapes, like reading the script for What's Up, Doc?

Somehow I only got around to reading "Shattered" just now. It was too sad to think that this was the last of the Dick Francis novels, and, I strongly suspected (correctly, as it turned out), not his best. Still, the experience would not be complete without it.

Like so many of Francis's novels, "Shattered" introduces the reader to a complex and esoteric skill; in this case, glassmaking. Gerard Logan is an up-and-coming young glassmaker who runs a shop in a small village and is friends with a local jockey. When his friend is killed in a tragic racing accident, Gerard finds himself unravelling the mystery he left behind--and on the run for his life.

Francis always had a fascination with new skills, and the ability to convey their intricacy and charm in accessible terms. The glassmaking sections of the book are its high point, as Gerard explains the intricacies of the process and muses on his own strengths and failings as a glassmaker. It's both an art form and a physical skill, and as such predicates its practitioners to hubris. Gerard is aware of the problem, while also not immune to the intense feeling of love and pride that artists can feel for their own creations. His honestly confessed pleasure in his own work is a nice touch, and, funnily enough, links him not so much with Francis's other artist-heroes, most of whom suffer serious self-doubt, but with his intellectuals and athletes; his admiration of his past work is highly reminiscent of the accountant Ro's admiration of his past cleverness in "Risk."

The action sequences, however, are not at top form, despite some very exciting stuff with molten glass. Gerard never really has to suffer and struggle and overcome his own mental and physical shortcomings the way previous heroes do, and it makes the book a bit flat by comparison. Instead, it's the female villain Rose who does the suffering and struggling and summoning of all her nerve. Indeed, Rose is a curious character and highlights the dangers of a female villain for the writer. She's apparently supposed to be the epitome of terrifying evil, since she resents and fears men and enjoys physically and emotionally dominating them as a result. Perhaps male readers find that more terrifying, or something; to me she didn't seem that frightening at all for most of the book, but rather a figure of pity, as all the men around her hate and fear her for her domineering behavior and physical aggressiveness, which results in the occasional bruise, and for "shopping" her brother-in-law to the police after her leaves her sister with a smashed-in face and multiple shattered ribs. This tellingly asymmetrical juxtaposition of violence is not, alas, explored in more detail, nor is the troublesome question of violence perpetrated by the oppressed and abused, or the question of what "justice" would mean in male-female relations and how, in fact, the very concept of justice founders on the rocks of that problem.

Anyway, "Shattered" may not be Francis's absolutely best work, but it's still got a lot going for it, and reminds us that the great master will be sorely missed.

A real disappointment. This author has been highly recommended by a number of friends and I was very much looking forward to my first Dick Francis novel. The author has apparently won a number of Edgar and other awards and has published over 40 books so he must be doing something right.

Well, if he is it certainly was not evident in this book. As others have said, it concerns a missing videotape, and that should give you an idea of how dated this book is. It is set in January 2000, and was written in 2005 when the author was already 85. And perhaps that explains why there is so little sparkle or even logic.

The novel seems to have a lot of trouble deciding exactly what it is. It does not work as a mystery for the reader to solve: major characters pop up halfway through the book and even later, with no foreshadowing or hint that this is the direction the novel will take.

And it certainly does not work as a thriller. There are so many plot holes and inconsistencies that at times I wondered if it was a satire. The plot begins with a glass blower leaving his shop just before midnight on Dec 31 1999 to join in the celebrations on the street. That’s fine, except that he leaves his shop unlocked, with a bag of money sitting on the counter when he could have put in his safe, and with a man he dislikes intensely left standing there inside the shop.

There is also the obligatory sexy unattached police woman who ends up in the main character’s bed after only three nights. And even though he is beaten badly TWICE, and even though he can identify the culprits, the police in general and his lover in particular seem to take no interest at all in investigating the attacks. He is left to rely on a series of informal bodyguards who show up at opportune times, again without any foreshadowing of their existence.

There is also the question of the attacks themselves. Even though this is in the middle of the English countryside, the attackers use BASEBALL bats. Amazing. I can only assume that some editor said, “The Americans will laugh their heads off if we say they used CRICKET bats (as they almost certainly would) and our American sales are a lot more important than the British sales, so we’ll have to risk the Brits laughing their heads and not offend the Americans.”

And there is also the small matter of how the thugs manage to use said baseball bats to shatter his watch while it is on his wrist without causing any damage whatsoever to his wrist. A short time later, the police woman shows up – even though she is a detective, she has been on patrol by herself in a small country town well into the night. And our glass blower is so taken by her beauty and her mere presence that he creates an elaborate three piece glass sculpture to capture her essence. This is well after midnight, and immediately after he has been badly beaten. And what of her police training – does she call an ambulance, or at least question him about the attack? No, she sits and enjoys the adulation while he immortalizes her in glass.

I could go on but you get the idea: the book is very poorly constructed. The only reason I finished it is because the author has such a strong reputation for carefully plotted mysteries that I was constantly expecting him to bring the novel together, to pull it out of the glass blower’s fire that is constantly being referred to – the author has obviously done a lot of research, and he makes sure that the reader knows it. But no such luck. Another one of those books that the author’s fans excuse as being "not his best" and only for “completists”. In other words a complete waste of time.

P.S. I heard a rumor later that his wife did most of the actual writing of his novels, while he supplied the "color" based on his career as a jockey. And sadly his wife died a few years before this story was written and that may well explain the deep disconnect between this and "his" much better earlier work.

Another fast paced read in the world of horse racing from the master of this genre. Recommend.

Great rollicking read

"Shattered" by Dick Francis is the fate of glass horse award exploding at climax of plot, told first-person, by glass-blower Gerard Logan. He loans his videotaped instructions for a priceless antique necklace copy to pal jockey Martin Stukely, who falls fatally, before dressing-room valet Eddie returns tape. Usual plot: thugs beat hero for mystery. Two sets of villains merge, keep beating, stealing tapes, confuses into three tapes and plot threads that go nowhere. I remembered clues and felt uninvolved.

Author's obsession with cancer evident. White-bearded disbarred Dr Adam Force (orange socks p138 also in "Field of Thirteen" 1 Raid at Kingdom Hill ) videotaped stolen unique cancer-cure research results, filched tape and Logan store holiday cash take, holds deadly insulin needle ready to kill. Instead of reporting to handy new cop girlfriend leather-clad motorcyclist Catherine, useless love interest, Logan baits trap, repeatedly putting his face in front of fists, slowed by dithering motionless assistant Pamela Jane. Minor roles, details, are vivid, fun, but pointless side plays: cute helpful Daniel Stukely 11 bribed with gold coins, his mom - gabby marriage-minded Bon-Bon, her mom - caftan floating rich Marigold, her bald tough chauffeur 24/7 bodyguard Worthington, and Catherine's Alice in Wonderland home decor. I'd like to see (some of) this cast in stronger plot(s), Francis' power of description (humor here small, in some characters) keeps me reading his work.

(Spoiler:
Force has tape his girlfriend Rose kills and hot glass tortures for, so why does she persist? Relationships, Eddie Rose's father, teen Victor caught in the middle Rose's nephew, complicate annoyingly, as well as minor characters, serve no purpose in resolution here, remind me of other books preparing for sequels. I guessed/ remembered which assistant of three is sneaker-clad traitor behind black stocking mask, guilty trainer Priam diverts raincoat, pointless good Pernickety Paul cop death, not much suspense.)