Shattered » (Unabridged)

Dick Francis was one of the most successful postwar steeplechase jockeys, winning more than 350 races and riding for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. After his retirement from the saddle, he published an autobiography, The Sport of Queens, before going on to write more than forty acclaimed books, including the New York Times bestsellers Even Money and Silks. A three-time Edgar Award winner, he also received the prestigious Crime Writers Association s Cartier Diamond Dagger, was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, and was awarded a CBE in the Queen s Birthday Honours List in 2000. He died in 2010 at age eighty-nine, and remains among the greatest thriller writers of all time.

Felix Francis is the younger of Dick Francis s two sons. Over the last forty years Felix has assisted with the research of many of the Dick Francis novels, not least Twice Shy, Shattered, and Under Orders. Since 2006, Felix has taken a more significant role in the writing, first with Dead Heat and then increasingly with the bestsellers, Silks and Even Money. Crossfire is the fourth novel of this father-and-son collaboration. Felix Francis lives in England.

When jockey Martin Stukely dies following a fall at Cheltenham races, he accidentally embroils his friend Gerald Logan in a perilous search for a stolen video tape.

Book Magazine

Francis' forty-first novel is an intriguing mix of glass blowing, violence and the people who make their living off horses. Many of Francis' novels center on the equestrian world, bu to say that his newest novel is about horse racing is stretching things a bit. The protagonist, Gerard Logan, is a glass blower who is befriended by jockey Martin Stukely. In the first chapter, Stukely is crushed by his horse and, from that point on, the novel concerns itself with Logan's desperate search for a stolen videotape that certain villains think he is hiding. Francis obviously has done his research on glass blowing; the passages where he describes Logan and his assistants making glass pieces are credible and evocative. The plot only slows down when Francis veers off into Logan's developing relationship with a fetching female detective. Both the love interest and the passages about horse racing seem irrelevant in this sporadically entertaining outing.
—Karen Shoffner