1 Jan 1998
15 Sep 2016

Yet another female victim dead for the thinnest of reasons ever, that is to say, a starting point for the plot. And the victim is a young woman who owns her sexuality. And the hero once again falls for an inappropriately young woman in a creepy way. And another woman is mocked for her feminism. I love it despite all those issues. It does evoke movie-making fairly well, as well as the remarkable changes of the twentieth century. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but there are certain visuals that stay with me over the years. And the love of riding.

Personal copy

I really enjoyed the descriptions of movie making and horse racing. Both are more work than I would ever have expected.

I picked this up at a village used book sale in the Cotswolds and it was a fun read. Thomas Lyon is a film director tasked with making a film based on an unsolved death in an English horse-racing community. The descriptions of film-making and horse racing are vivid and engaging and the story itself is hard to put down. However, this book was written in 1994 and some of the views and commentary on women did not age well.

Fun and gripping, like all the Francis books I've read so far. But I can't help but wish he had never written a female character. He just can't do them decently.

Also there is a fascinatingly peculiar assertion that once a woman has had sex, she gets pouches in her lower eyelids. I'm just ... boggling.