Another great Dick Francis page turner. Gerard Logan is a glassblower and friend of jockey Martin Stuckley, who dies after a fall in a steeplechase race. His valet gives Gerard a videotape that apparently many people want, because he's beaten up several times for it. The tape, which has invaluable research on cancer treatment, has been stolen from Gerard, but because mobster Rose Payne and her terrifying crew, as well as Dr. Force, who originally stole the tape, don't believe him, there's lots of mayhem, ending up with a showdown in the glassblowing studio where one police officer dies and many others are injured. A good read and lots of interesting information about glassblowing.

OPERATION TBR BUSTER

Dedication: To Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother in celebration of her 100th birthday. With endless gratitude, love and every good wish, from Dick Francis.

Opening: Four of us drove together to Cheltenham races on the day when Martin Stukely died there from a fall in a steeplechase.

Oh dear but this was a lackluster storyline: same old same old and probably written on a laptop in the back of a car at the same speed that the chauffeur was driving. The one saving grace is the research he had done on glassblowing, which I found interesting, and I hadn't visited glassblowing since Daphne du Maurier's familial semi-bio called Glassblowers.

So yeah, this very nearly was a 1* and that would have been a shame after all Francis has given us. Not recommended unless you are a completist.

4* - Dead Cert (1962)
3* - Nerve (1964)
TR - Odds Against (1965)
3* - For Kicks (1965)
4* - Blood Sport (1967)
3* - Enquiry (1969)
4* - Bonecrack (1971)
3* - Whip Hand (1974)
3* - Proof (1984)
4* - Bolt (1986)
3* - Straight (1989)
4* - Decider (1993)
3* - Field of Thirteen (1998)
2* - Shattered (2000)

After a jockey friend is killed during a race, Gerard Logan,glass blower, receives a video tape from his dead friend’s valet. This starts a chain of events that sees him the target of criminal types bent on getting hold of the video.

I thought it was a fairly fast paced read. It did lose me in a few places though.

Not a compelling story but I learned a lot about glass blowing.

Riveting

I’ve lived with a glassblower and the terrifying free for all in the glasswork studio was accurate and terrifying.
The overall plot was complicated as were the characters. A terrific suspenseful read.

Although this was good, I think it was the beginning of a slide down in quality on Francis' books. Keep in mind, I've loved his books for 30 years, so this is hard to say. They're still good yarns, though, with characters you can like, but I found this less enthralling than usual.

Shattered, Dick Francis (mystery, crime)
Jeff Book Review #289

A 2000 British crime novel, "Shattered" starts when a racehorse jockey dies falling from a stumbling horse in a race. The protagonist Gerard Logan was a friend of the dead jockey and receives a videotape of unknown content from the jockey that is subsequently stolen. Logan is an expert glass artisan. This one moves a bit slowly and disconnectedly as we see characters in the jockey's and Logan's orbits gassed, robbed, or beat up while someone is hunting for that videotape, and Logan still has no clue as to what's on it since it was stolen before he even had his hands on it.

I know this is a British story, but a dozen times I asked myself why the cop just didn't shoot the bad guy, or why the protagonist didn't try to defend himself, before remembering that none of these people (even the cops) had guns. Also, the lack of cars meant that the protagonist was enslaved to calling for rides or taking trains or buses, and it just added unnecessary logistics as the mystery played out. This one is a bit dated, too, with computers and emails spoken of like they were brand new exotic science fiction devices.

Verdict: As a mystery, this one is okay, but as a crime novel it is really boring. The twist and final act actually work and make it worth a read in the end, despite my mostly negative comments above.

Jeff's Rating: 2 / 5 (Okay)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG-13

I usually really like Dick Francis's books, but this one was pretty weak. A glassblower who hangs with the racing crowd (of course; it is a Dick Francis story!) is in search of a videotape (VHS. Really?) that contains some secret supposedly worth millions. The tape was given to him by a now deceased jockey and stolen from him before he could watch it. He is being threatened by people who think he still has it. The stupid decisions he made about how to pursue the mystery and throw off his attackers eventually got an innocent man killed, but he still thinks he did everything right. The storyline was implausible from start to finish, so not my favorite Francis book.

Not his best book, the narrative moves long with pace and the usual strong hero character delivers a tense finish but the basic plot was not really credible for me. Why would the police not be called?

About Dick Francis you can either say "the books are all the same" or "you get exactly what you expect". There will be a fairly young main character that excel at his occupation. The occupation will always be different and never directly involved in horse racing, but some way still involved in the racing world. The main character will be single but meet a lovely girl somewhere along the trip. The main character will suffer bodily harm. The books are always told from a first person perspective. There will always be detailed technical explanations about the main characters occupation, showing that Dick Francis has done thorough research. It's probably possible to add more similarities with some effort.

So I know all this, and still I keep reading his books? Well, they are quite short, quite well written and in general enjoyable. Never a Nobel Prize winner, but he deserves his three stars for this book as well.

Shattered is another of those Dick Francis novels which takes place mostly outside the world of British horseracing, which is where most of his novels were set. There are a handful of racing scenes here, but the protagonist, Gerard Logan, is a glass-blower who makes delicate glass sculptures in his shop near the Cheltenham race course.

As the book opens, Logan has gone to the races in the company of one of his best friends, a jockey named Martin Stukely. But Stukely dies tragically that afternoon when his horse fails to properly negotiate a jump and crushes him to death.

Logan, naturally, is heartsick and collects his friend's personal effects to that he can deliver them to Stukley's widow. As he does, Stukely's elderly valet gives him a package, explaining that someone had given it to Stukely, who in turn was to give it to Logan for safekeeping. The valet doesn't know who delivered the package to Stukely, only that the jockey had joked that the contents were "worth a million."

The package turns out to be a videotape, but before Logan can examine it, someone steals it and Logan is badly beaten up. Meanwhile, some very rough customers learn that Logan has been given the videotape. They don't know what is on the tape either, only that it's supposed to be very valuable and that Logan is supposed to have it or know where it is. They refuse to believe that it has been stolen from him, which will place Logan in grave danger throughout the book.

Logan will thus spend most of the book attempting to discover what might have been recorded on the tape and who might have taken it. Along the way, he will be assaulted several times. He will also spend a great deal of time discussing the intricacies of glass-blowing.

I've noted before that I think that Francis's most successful novels were the ones set firmly in the world of horse racing and that when he wandered away into other fields, the books often lacked the tension and suspense of the majority of his books, basically because he felt compelled to display all of the research he had done for the novel. Such is the case here and so, in my opinion at least, this book is okay, but it's not as good as many of his others.

I am an avid Dick Francis reader, and in giving this particular book two stars, I am doing so relative to what I would normally expect from a Francis novel.

I really enjoyed learning more about glassblowing and thought the main character was quite likeable. I also thought the villain quite intriguing and scary. However, the mystery didn't really suck me in, and there were several aspects I found irritating. For example, Garard finds himself in a relationship with the policewoman initially sent to investigate the theft. She sees the aftermath of him getting beaten to a pulp multiple times, but supports him in carrying on the investigation sans police. And though Francis often (possibly even always) has his protagonists solve the mystery with little or no help from the police, it is usually more believable than in this story.

One last criticism-the writing style in this particular book seemed off to me for Dick Francis. And this is coming after reading four of his other books in a row. There were times I wasn't sure what he was trying to say and had to reread sections in order to understand, but often was still confused. Very unlike Francis, and I can't help but wonder if he wasn't really into the story, either, but had to continue on in order to meet a deadline.

With that said, it was still enjoyable enough to read, and I would have given it a three-star rating had it not been a Francis novel that came with some degree of expectation.