This is out of order! And I made it this far without messing up! I was already well started when I realized my error, and simply decided not to go back.
I'm sad - because for only the second time in the Dick Francis reread, I am disappointed. The plot seemed rather formulaic, even a bit plodding. I never had that sense of tension and drama that I am accustomed to find in the scene in which the hero is tied up or knocked in the head and left for dead. The whole business was far too similar to that bit in an earlier book.
The hero, Tom Forsyth, had the potential to be one of the most compelling in all of Francis-dom, but fell far short of the mark. It opens with a scene in Afghanistan - where he, an army officer, gets his foot blown off by an IED. Then it's just sort of, so what? The only major impact of that is that he is not going back to his regiment as a combat officer. By the way, how many seventeen-year-old runaway enlistees end up at Sandhurst and come out officers? Really? Seventeen years later, he goes "home" because he has nowhere else to go - to the mother and stepfather that he ran away from - rescues the world and his mother, a racehorse trainer, retires and leaves him the business.
He has no strong ties to horses or racing, doesn't really care about either - he doesn't go to the races - he doesn't pitch in with the horses.
His army career doesn't connect with the story except that it gives the writer an opportunity to quote long passages on military strategy from Sun Tzu as Tom goes after the bad guys single-handed (and single-footed, although that doesn't pose a significant handicap to him). No ties to his actual experiences - except occasional discussions of how he never minded slaughtering the Taliban, but killing a white man gives him pause.
I think they overreached in their attempt to use the military as a framework - not because it couldn't be done - but because I don't think either of them understood it well enough to go there. This is the last of the "ands" (Dick Francis AND Felix Francis), and one might speculate that father was failing badly and son hadn't quite got the act together yet - but it makes me nervous about the Felix Francis books which follow this.
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