Good read. Not about the actual horse racing but this is about the vet's who treat horses and fraud. Very interesting

Peter Darwin no relation to Charles Darwin is a diplomat who ends up investigating the deaths of several horses during operations. Ken is a veterinarian surgeon who Peter befriends when he escorts his future in laws who he saved from a mugging in Florida.

Ken cannot understand why horses he operates on are dying. I actually enjoyed all the details about how you can poison horses. Fascinating but I am curious about how things work.

The practice where Ken works suffers a fire and a body is discovered. Later there is another murder. Peter finds love with Annabel the bishops daughter. The reveal that the elderly Carey is the murderer is a surprise. I thought it was the nasty Oliver in league wit Jay. However, the police would have checked peoples financial records and would probably uncover Carey’s losses and motive of money.

It's been quite a while since I've read a Dick Francis book, and this one seemed a bit more complicated than most of his mysteries. So it was not the quick mindless read I had planned on but required my attention. Peter Darwin is a foreign diplomat between assignments who comes to the aid of a couple and finds himself accompanying them back to England very near his childhood home. The couple's daughter works at a vet practice and is engaged to be married but recently her fiancée, a surgeon that specializes in horses, has had a run of terrible results and his reputation and practice is on the line. Peter takes a liking to the man and after part of the vet practice goes up in flames, he begins to apply his diplomatic skills and memories of the area's past to sleuthing. It's a very tangled web indeed. I was quite immersed, just so sorry for the demise of too many horses!!

Excellent as ever. Can't put his books down once started.

Peter Darwin is between assignments with the foreign service. He goes out to dinner and live music with a work acquaintance. The musicians are mature, but posses poerful voices. After their performance, they are mugged, and Peter attempts to assist. This lead to him travelling with them to Cheltenham for their daughter's wedding. Their son-in-law to be is a local vet, who's a gifted surgeon, who has had many horses die under his care. Unbeknownst to his hosts, Peter grew up in this area (his father was a jockey who died in a freak steeplechase accident, and his mother knew the vet's father). He commits to helping the vet restore his good name.

Back to my collection of Dick Francis as I hope to finished rereading them all this year. Enjoyed the set up with the main character working in the British foreign service but with a background in the horse racing world (father a jockey who died young, mother worked at a racetrack, etc) which comes in handy when Peter Darwin escorts an older couple from Florida to England after a mugging only to find a much more serious situation going on at the vet clinic their daughter and soon to be son in law work at. Well paced, interesting suspense.

Quick read that keeps you guessing and I was wrong several times on who the killer was. And, I never did guess correctly!

Fun mystery from an English author.

What started off with some endearing wit from English diplomat Peter Darwin turned into a slog about dying horses in a veterinary practice. Went on too long with little happening.

Peter Darwin comes home to England after completing his posting in Tokyo.Along the way,he stops in the US and meets a couple who have run into a bit of trouble and ask him to accompany them to England.

The Francis heroes are all good samaritans,always ready to help perfect strangers regardless of the personal risk to themselves.

Their daughter's fiance is a vet,and many horses have died as he has operated on them.Then,his hospital is burnt,and a charred body is discovered.

Later,there is another gruesome murder.Peter Darwin sticks around to help them in an extremely dangerous situation.He is confronted by several characters from his childhood.This was the town where he had lived as a child.

Francis goes into a lot of details about the various ways in which horses can be killed on a vet's operating table.That gets a bit boring.

There is a large cast of characters,which helps to disguise the identity of the culprit.Not among his best thrillers,but Francis hardly wrote any bad books.

Horses are dying, a vet is being targeted, and an outsider with nothing better to do is drawn in to this question of is everything really what it seems?

The who-dunnit was marvellous. You're not even sure if there is a mystery, or just someone crying wolf. The villains are satisfyingly surprising while believable. The key to unravelling the mystery is paced well and keeps you intruigued.

The characters, however, failed to draw me in and seemed too loosely tied together to make for a compelling narrative. Generally, that's my favourite part of Francis' books: the down to earth characters bonded together by blood, friendship and loyalty. This time it was a separate cast of characters without any chemistry, little to no ties, and mostly happy to go their separate ways.

Okay, there's a really weird and gratuitous sluts/wives thing going on. I don't know what that's about, nor do I want to know. If any of the weird romantic stuff in any of these books has some basis in biography, I do not want to know.

Here's an interesting thing: even if I don't remember plot, motive, solution, location, etc. I do always remember the graphic violence associated with each book. Kudos to the Francii for evoking some vivid images.

And I also liked the stuff about UK foreign service, particularly as it differs from US.

Personal copy