Gerard Logan is a master glass-blower who's got a jockey friend. The jockey is killed in a racing accident, but he leaves behind for Gerard a video that contains some precious information. Before Gerard can watch it, the video is stolen, and he determines, for his friend's sake, to get it back.

There are a lot of similarities here to Wild Horses: someone with a slightly unusual profession stumbles across something which is important enough for other people to kill for, and spends the rest of the book evading the nasties and finding out what's going on. Unfortunately, whereas that book was a really good read, this one was very poor.

The story was just not very exciting, it seemed production-line. The plot was silly, and the characters implausible. It reminded me of a Famous Five story. If I hadn't looked on Amazon and seen that this is pretty much universally regarded as a poor book, I wouldn't bother with any more Dick Francis. As it is, I'll try another one.

Brilliant reading by Tony Britton again. And at least I found out what an "annealing oven" is for.

Completed : 25-Jan-2005 (audiobook)