I had forgotten, Francis repeated another hero besides Sid Halley. Here we have Kit Fielding, a jockey - Francis going back to his roots. We also have a British version of the Hatfields and the McCoys - or the Montagues and the Capulets - although these lovers married and are expecting a child. The one is Kit's twin sister, Holly, (BTW Kit is short for Christmas, since the pair of them were born on Christmas Day) and the other is the son and third or fourth generation of the Fielding family's most implacable enemy. Throughout the book Francis drops little anecdotes of the generations of enmity and several theories regarding the trigger incident back in the distant past - "my great-grandfather claimed ...".
Which calls to mind a stylistic thing: Francis always writes in first person. Now I'm trying to think if he ever "cheats" on the first person point of view -- maybe I'll have to go back and read them all again --- or maybe I'll ask my daughter, who has just started reading them, to keep that in mind.
At any rate, there is a deliberate campaign in the sporting press aimed at putting Holly's husband, a trainer, out of business - and that's only for openers. The good news is that Kit and Bobby manage to bury the hatchet - and not in each other - although there are a couple of close calls. And, maybe to make up for the wholesale carnage in the previous book, I don't believe anyone is actually killed. No one important, anyway.
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