I am a huge fan of Dick Francis mysteries. When he passed away and his son took up his mantle, I decided to reserve judgment until I had read a few. (I had been burned once before by this dynamic when the brilliant and innovative Frank Herbert died and his son Brian started writing decidedly inferior sequels to his Dune series.) It was noted that Felix had helped Dick with the massive research required to deliver his books, and since I was cognizant of what that involved (Dick’s books were chock full of interesting details about all sorts of things), and since it was also noted that Felix had co-written the last few, I believed that Felix might just have the master’s touch.

I have read several of Felix’s books since he began writing on his own, and while they weren’t quite Dick Francis, they weren’t bad. I enjoyed both Bloodline and Damage, and when I saw that Triple Crown was another book featuring Jeff Hinkley (the protagonist of Damage), I was somewhat enthusiastic about picking it up.

I think it will be my last authored by Felix.

I am not an apologist for such American quirks as overly armed police officers, or the animal cruelty that is present in the branding of cattle and horses, or the convoluted groups of associated government departments that nonetheless refuse to work together. Quite the contrary, in fact: Based on my experience working as a librarian who was constantly called upon to be a social worker for certain of our patrons, I applaud the recent movement towards scaling back police influence to do the things they are actually trained to do. I am a vegetarian and deplore all forms of deliberate injury to animals; and I think the level of jockeying for power in Washington is ludicrous. But that doesn’t mean I want to read about all those things and, if I did, it certainly wouldn’t be in the pages of what is supposed to be an entertaining mystery novel.

The plot seems like a reasonably good one: Jeff Hinkley, who works as a covert investigator for the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), is requested to come to America to help their Federal Anti-Corruption in Sports Agency (FACSA) find out who in their organization is passing on confidential information that will help horse trainers and owners evade arrest when they get up to such things as drugging rival horses. After consulting with the agency’s Deputy Director, by whom he was invited to come, Hinkley sets up a sting operation in which he goes undercover as a groom for a trainer believed to cut corners to win races, hoping that, as an insider, he will be able to find information on the mole. As he discovers some horrifying steps this trainer is taking to win the Triple Crown, his added motive becomes to root out this corruption before more horses die.

The execution of the story turns into a vehicle for Francis, disguised as Hinkley, to exhibit a condescending supercilious attitude toward American horse-racing when compared with the British, and this attitude constitutes almost the only defining trait of the protagonist—he is otherwise so unmemorable that near the end of the novel, when he decides to dye his hair and beard dark as a disguise, I was utterly surprised that he had been a blond previous to the dye job, because his physicality was left so vague throughout the book. Hinkley is completely lacking in the charm, intelligence, or wit of a Dick Francis hero. He is a fatal combination of bland and pompous that endears him to no one, including his fellow characters or the reader.

In addition to the rather overbearing anti-American themes is the pedantic tone of his explanatory passages, which constantly trip you up and shove you out of the story. The dialogue is likewise stilted and formal, and the character development is rudimentary at best, and laden with offensive clichés. Hinkley’s attitude toward his co-worker, Maria, the Puerto Rican hot walker for the stable, basically consists of his observation that she’s a hot mama; his Mexican roommate is a drunkard and a simpleton; he seems surprised that a female federal agent could be such a crack shot; and another female agent becomes a stereotype of a whiny mistress to her colleague’s married man. Dick Francis’s gentle misogyny was both understandable (due to his age and upbringing) and predictable; but what is Felix’s problem with women in particular? It seems that, along with not respecting them, he doesn’t particularly admire them either. At least his father had a healthy appreciation and understanding of relationships and knew how to write them.

My constant feeling during the reading of this novel was that I was trudging through a quicksand of expository prequel while hoping the actual story would pick up at some point and become involving, but it never did. By the time the book reached the intended climactic scenes, I simply didn’t care—and the lackluster way in which they were written confirmed those feelings.

Next time I’m feeling nostalgic for an exciting mystery with a horse racing theme, I’ll go back and re-read the real thing. And perhaps, at this point, this Francis should quit putting “A Dick Francis Novel” on his covers.