Date first published	20/09/2018
ISBN Number	978- 1-4711 -7311 -0
Page Count	432 h/b
h/b= hardback : p/b= paperback

Storyline

Harrison Foster is a lawyer by training but works as a crisis manager for a London firm that specialises in such matters. Summoned to Newmarket after a fire in the Chadwick Stables slaughters six very valuable horses, including the short-priced favourite for the Derby, Harry (as he is known) finds there is far more to the simple fire than initially meets the eye. For a start , human remains are found amongst the equestrian ones in the burnt-out shell. All the stable staff are accounted for, so who is the mystery victim?

Harry knows very little about horses, indeed he positively dislikes them, but he is thrust unwillingly into the world of Thoroughbred racing where the standard of care of the equine stars is far higher than that of the humans who attend them.

The Chadwick family are a dysfunctional racing dynasty, with the emphasis being on the nasty. Resentment between the generations is rife and sibling rivalry bubbles away like volcanic magma beneath a thin crust of respectability.

Harry represents the Middle-Eastern owner of the Derby favouriteand, as he delves deeper into the unanswered questions surrounding the horse's demise, he ignites a fuse that blows the volcano sky-high, putting him in grave jeopardy. Can Harry solve the riddle before he is overcome by the toxic emmissions from the eruption is killed off by the fallout?

Review

This story is quite a slow burner, it is nearly a third of the way through before anything of any real substance happens. Prior to that the story is set in the aftermath of the fire, and Harry learning a bit about the family that is involved in the mess.

Whilst Pulse centred much more around the main character, here we learn less about Harry , other than he is single and works for the crisis management company.

Once the story does get going, then the body count starts to mount, but not all at the hands of the killer, for buried within the fanily is a far darker secret, one which will ultimately destroy the reputation of the whole family. It is this secret which has led to the first murder, and the deaths of the horses.

As so often with the Francis novels the hero also finds true love, in this case the sister of the secretary of the stables that has been torched.

I was not so drawn in by this story, as I was with the previous one, yet I can't decide why. The story is typical Francis fare, an event, our hero investigating and faced with peril - much what you would expect from this franchise - and it is not the familiarity that puts me off (in fact it is one of the reasons I like these books for Christmas). Perhaps it was the slow start, and the fact that for much of the book very little happens to the hero - he is very much a bystander, with events heading off of their own accord. Yet to say that Harry is a bystander, does not mean a substandard novel - because other books within the series can see the hero as very much a watcher of events.

To conclude a typical workman like story from the author, and although it didn't get my Pulse! racing a decent story.

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