Three months ago I lost a family member to suicide. So for a while I had to put this book down because the title character is contemplating suicide and dealing with depression.
This is a Dick Francis mystery, not a book about depression. However I was deeply impressed with, and appreciate the way depression was portrayed. Gene Hawkins, the main character, is battling sustained depression. He muses to himself that depression does not respect success, achievement, or even satisfaction. Set in the sixties, Gene does not seek treatment or even consider it. Today mental illness has still not lost its stigma and many go undiagnosed, untreated and perhaps unnoticed. Gene will always resonate with me even if the mystery he figures in is less memorable.

The first few Dick Francis novels, whilst very enjoyable, do follow a bit of a formula. With this one he began to branch out a little. And he does it very successfully. The lead character is a deeply troubled man and we get to know him throughout the book which is the first break from the formula.

the story takes places almost exclusively outside the British Isles which is another break from the formula and the plot unfolds at a different pace to the previous novels.

The story is almost a whodunnit but there are not quite enough clues offered for the reader to work out the identity, there are a few wrong turns though which make for an enjoyable read.

It is of it's time (late 60s) but it does hold up well. The writing put me in mind of later Ian Fleming novels and that is no bad thing.

Highly recommended. If you are a fan then you will relish this one, if you felt the first few books were rather samey pulp fiction then this is worth your time.

English secret agent Gene Hawkins is depressingly facing three weeks of vacation with only his tormented past for company. So when his boss asks him to help millionaire Dave Teller locate a prized missing stallion, he accepts. This is after he saves Teller from drowning. Hawkins realizes that the boating accident that almost killed Teller was not an accident.
Hawkins travels to Lexington KY, Santa Barbara CA and Montana to track down now, several stolen horses.
Lots of action and of course the good guys win.

Good adventure story, and a lot of good side characters, but the main character is so hopelessly depressed throughout, with so little hope even at the end, that I found this one harder to enjoy than most of his.

Dick Francis is an awesome writer. What more can I say? Not much. Another very Goodread.

There were a few annoying mistakes in the writing, one surprising given that it was horse-related, but didn’t mar the overall plot, just moments.

The plot isn't as well-tuned as Francis's norm, with an unusual amount of low-stakes wandering around looking for clues, but the hero makes it memorable.

Gene is a former James Bond-type secret agent turned private eye (unusually for Francis - his heroes tend not to be professional hero types) suffering from long-term, severe depression. He spends a lot of the book trying to convince himself not to commit suicide. Treatment is never mentioned, and he seems to think it doesn't exist - at one point he muses that some day depression will be recognized as a disease, and babies will be inoculated against it. Originally published in 1967, when there most certainly were treatments for depression. However, to this day many depressed people never seek treatment, so I believe that Gene wouldn't.

In the first and best action set-piece, Gene's boss invites him on a boating trip, where Gene meets the boss's sweet 17-year-old daughter and saves someone's life in what appears to be, but of course is not, a boating accident. The boss gives him a job - hunting down a missing race horse in America - with the clear intent of keeping him too busy to off himself. There's a semi-romance with the teen daughter of the "I'll wait till you're 21" type, of which the best thing I can say is that it's less squicky than usual. There's a much better non-romance subplot involving a woman Gene's age who seems to be a standard unstable, alcoholic sexpot, but who is then given actual depth and a very satisfying storyline.

The pieces of this book don't fit together as well as Francis learned to do later. Gene has a helper who needed better characterization for his storyline to really work, and the final action climax isn't that climactic. But the depiction of depression is very realistic, and it's a good example of how to write a depressed hero without making the book itself depressing to read.

The book seemed a bit fast-paced for what spanned over many weeks. Although I would have wished for stronger connections between the protagonists and the other characters I have to say this book did have its wow factor. I found it kind of odd, yet amazing, how Gene was able to deduce so many clues from things that I would have found ordinary or useless during investigations. It was nice to see how someone could always think two steps ahead of the game. Overall, I hardly felt any emotional attachments to the characters but found it insightful if you want to know how to think like a secret agent.

3.5 stars. Not as good as the first Sid Hawley book, Odds Against, but still an enjoyable book. This one lost me in some plodding chapters along the way. Gene is a civil servant obviously in the spying field and is hired while he is on vacation to find an American's missing thoroughbred horse. Gene first meets David Teller on his boss' boat on the Thames where they encounter a young couple stuck on their punt in one of the locks. David is accidently (?) hit off the boat during the attempted rescue and Gene jumps in the save him. Gene is battling depression and suicidal thought which run throughout the book, sometimes a bit too much for this readers liking, so he surprises himself by his will to live when saving David from the water. Gene decides to take the case and tracks the two punters who tried to kill David to a ranch in the Midwest. Here he finds and steals back the race horse but not before being caught and left for dead by the thieves. He now sets out to find two other of David's horses that were stolen years earlier and finds out that the mastermind behind this stolen horse scheme is the punter's uncle who happens to live right next door to David's new home in California. That was why they had to kill David for fear that her might recognize his horses. Gene protects David, gets the horses back and decides to live to fight another day. I liked the search for the first horse but the second search was a bit more convoluted and I started to lose interest.

First 2/3 of the book - 3 stars
Last 1/3 of the book - very engaging, very suspenseful. 5 stars.

Three stud horses over a ten year period mysteriously disappear. Gene Hawkins, the protagonist, is hired to find them after the owner of the latest one is nearly killed in an apparent accident and Gene saves him.

On the second read, I was impressed by the thoroughness of the main character, Gene, is doing his job. When the book starts, he is starting three weeks vacation. He is very depressed with life, and doesn't look forward to the time off. His boss phones him up to come on a boating trip on the Thames with his family and Dave, an American friend. There is an incident at a lock and the friend in knocked into the water, and Gene dives in after him. They both go under the weir (!!) and come up on the other side. Later, Dave asks Gene to come to Kentucky to find his race horse that has disappeared while in transport. Gene meets up with Walt, an investigator from a NY insurance agency, and together they find the horse (with Gene's ingenious ways). Dave asks Gene if he can find two other horses that he has lost and this is when things get more dicey. Gene seems to not need sleep or food, and constantly thinks of suicide. When the story ends, he is feeling more positive about his future.

one of the better efforts from the racetrack specialist. an unusual hero, still the quiet but strong introverted one, highly intelligent and self-reliant, but this time one burdened by a crippling depression. The bad guy is more in line with the usual Francis typecast : moneyed, smooth, greedy, less prone to violence than in other books. Also typical is the presence of a very appealing female companion.
The plot is of course about racehorses, and the setting moves from the Thames riverbanks to Kentucky green hills, the snowy Tetons, Las Vegas and the Pacific beaches.
recommended for anyone willing to try a solid thriller from a master of the genre.