Product Description

It is difficult to say where disaster begins, to point towards one particular happening as the first definite step towards distant cataclysm. Looking back, Tim Ekaterin sees the beginning as the day his boss stepped into a fountain. Onwards from there, he comes across people and events as yet unconnected but which, when woven together by time and chance, leads towards violent explosive action and the threat of death. Set in the worlds of thoroughbred racing and merchant banking, the story covers a span of three years, growing from quiet harmless-seeming seeds to a wholly horrific harvest.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1040573 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

About the Author
Dick Francis has written thirty-seven bestselling thrillers set in the field of racing, and SHATTERED (September 2000) will be the next. He and his wife Mary divide their time between England and the British West Indies.

Customer Reviews

Exciting and informative.
Is Dick Francis a masochist, or a man to be avoided? Never have I found an author so imaginative about beatings-up. No Francis hero ever gets theough a book without being bashed thoroughly and painfully, and Tim Ekaterin, the Banker of this book, is no exception, finding himself in the last pages squashed beneath a horse sent berserk by drugs administered by the villain.

Tim Ekaterin is the rising star of his family's merchant bank, who knows his way around the racing world thanks to his mother's passion for it, but has never felt particularly drawn to it. All this changes when the bank is asked to finance the purchase by a stud owner of a top racehorse, Sandcastle, for stud purposes. Things appear to run smoothly, but then a high proportion of the stallion's first crop of foals are born with a variety of defects. Ruin stares the stud owner in the face, and Tim is inexorably drawn into finding out just what is going on.

As usual with Francis, it's a case of a villain who started in a small way, and was then seduced by the combined appeal of money and vengeance, and in the final pages the hero finds himself at his mercy...

Exciting stuff, with meticulous attention to detail. If you ever want to know about merchant banking, or how to invest in a stallion, look no further.

Gripping narrative
This work brings the world of racing (always a feature of Dick Francis books) into the world of banking. The narrator is Tim Ekaterin of the Paul Ekaterin Merchant bank. The story begins quite mildly with small problems within the bank such as competitors taking over companies that Eketarin’s were setting up. There is little doubt that someone inside the bank is passing on confidential information. Over the next three years the issues increase until the final solution to the puzzle. As usual Francis gives a very easy to read thriller.