I was in the mood to pick up another Dick Francis novel last week, and this one was much more suspense than mystery. From the beginning we know who the bad guy is, and the plot becomes an ingenious series of ploys to both appease him and hold him off from worse offenses than he has already committed in order to get his way.

Neii Griffon is a former antiques dealer who sold his successful chain of stores and then set up shop as a consultant to businesses that need his expertise to go from failing to thriving. But he grew up in his father’s shadow in a prestigious stable where six million dollars’ worth of horseflesh is housed, trained, and raced on behalf of various owners, so when his father is in a serious auto accident and isn’t able to run the stables for several months, Neil steps in.

At this most unfortuitous moment, unmeeting wishes collide and Neil has to figure out how to keep the horses and stables safe and also to survive on a personal level. A crime czar whose 18-year-old son has expressed the desire to be a top jockey insists that Neil’s father’s stable take the son on and immediately give him premium rides on winning horses. Despite everything Neil can do to explain to the man the unreasonableness and sheer impossibility of his desires, the man is not deterred, and his threats are some of them made real to convince Neil otherwise. Neil must give the young man a chance to be the rider he wants to be without compromising the wishes of the horses’ owners or the integrity of the track, all without telling anyone else who works at the stables why this new apprentice is receiving preferential treatment or involving the police when crimes are committed to ensure Neil stays in line.

Although there is a certain formula to his novels, Francis always manages to make the moral quandary and the practical solution interesting. And any Dick Francis protagonist would meet this challenge bravely, intelligently, and pragmatically, without ever giving in to such threats, regardless of the harm that will inevitably come to him. (Yes, some of the cracked bones are Neil’s.) The working out of all of this provides much of the enjoyment received from reading them.

This was perhaps not the most exciting nor the most ingenious of Francis’s books, but I really enjoyed the tension of the situation and the evolution of the characters.