Shattered - Hardcover

Francis, Dick

3.92

6,084 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0718144538 ISBN 13: 9780718144531

Publisher: Michael Joseph, 2000

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When jockey Martin Stukely dies following a fall at Cheltenham races, he accidentally embroils his friend Gerard Logan in a perilous search for a stolen video tape. Logan is a glass blower on the verge of widespread acclaim for the ingenuity of his work. Long accustomed to the frightful dangers inherent in molten glass and in maintaining a furnace at never less than 1,800 F, he is suddenly faced with a series of terrifying threats to his business, his courage and his life. He reckons that tosurvive he must find the video tape before a group of thugs who will kill to acquire it. The final race to the tape throws more hazards in Logan's way than his dead jockey friend could ever have imagined.

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Review:

Few writers can lay claim to having made a genre entirely their own, but the racing thriller remains unassailably Dick Francis territory. And Shattered, as smoothly crafted a piece of entertainment as anything he has produced, is a reminder that despite various pretenders to the throne, he retains his crown--even the kafuffle regarding the authorship of his books (his wife apparently lent a hand at times) only increased his profile, with readers seemingly indifferent to this revelation. What is his secret? Primarily, of course, it's the author's finely honed narrative skills that immediately mark him out as a master entertainer--thrillers such as Rat Race, Smokescreen and Trial Run bristle with energy and momentum. The ace in the hole is that satisfying sense of insider knowledge in his plots, however implausible they are. Shattered once again conveys that the equestrian world is quite as dangerous as Colin Dexter's Groves of Academe: jockey Martin Stukely dies after a fall in a steeplechase at Cheltenham races, and his friend, artist Gerald Logan, finds that the dead man has a connection to a stolen videotape with mysterious (and highly valuable) contents. Logan is more familiar with the problems of glass-blowing than violence and extortion, but he is soon undergoing a crash course in survival techniques as some very malignant heavies target him.

The protagonist of Shattered is only peripherally connected with the racing world, and this broader palette has resulted in a signal recharging of the batteries. The lean, unfussy narrative has the customary race-to-the-tape motion, but Logan is a nicely judged semi-hero, convincingly at sea (as most of us would be) in very dangerous waters. And, as always, the prose makes its mark with a commendable directness:

The horse fell at the peak of his forward-to-win acceleration and crashed down at thirty or more miles an hour. Winded, he lay across the jockey for inert moments, then rocked back and forwards vigorously in his struggle to rise to his feet. The fall and its aftermath looked truly terrible from where I watched on the stands and the racecourse doctor, though instantly attending him from his following car, couldn't prevent the fast gathering group of paramedics and media people from realising that Martin Stukely, though semi-conscious, was dying before their eyes. They glimpsed the blood frothing out of the jockey's mouth, choking him as the sharp ends of broken ribs tore his lungs apart.

--Barry Forshaw

Review:

The narrative is brisk and gripping and the background researched with care . . . the entire story is a pleasure to relish (Scotsman)

Dick Francis's fiction has a secret ingredient - his inimitable knack of grabbing the reader's attention on page one and holding it tight until the very end (Sunday Telegraph)

Francis writing at his best (Evening Standard)

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