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INSIDE TRACK
by John Francome
St Martin's Minotaur, October 2004
320 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0312329792


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Jamie Hutchinson has just been released from jail, after serving time for the drink-driving death of Alan Kirkstall. He's grown too tall and gained too much weight to ride on the flat, so his sister Pippa thinks he might want to give riding jumpers a shot, since jockeying is all Jamie really knows. Pippa has set Jamie up for a trial with a local trainer, Ros Bradey.

Pippa also trains horses; her biggest rival is the lecherous yet successful Toby Priest. Jamie was out with two of Toby's sons, Malcolm and Richard, the night that Alan Kirkstall was killed. Pippa is married to Malcolm, which makes the whole family/business connection tangled and well-nigh incestuous. It becomes even more so when Alan's sister Marie begins working for Ros; Marie's father and aunt hate Jamie with a passion, while Marie is a little more compassionate. This causes problems on several fronts for everyone involved.

Malcolm runs a bloodstock agency; he sells, at an incredibly inflated price, a racehorse to the owner of Beaufort Holidays. Barney Beaufort wants to make his company a household word; his marketing person is Malcolm's current mistress, Beverly Harris. Ms Harris is at least as intelligent as she is beautiful, which is saying quite a bit.

Detective Inspector Jane Culpepper has been assigned to take a new look at 'the Bonfire Night Murders', which at first glance seem to be drug-connected. In the process of 'following the money,' she bumps into the Priest family, and the rat's nest of their lives.

Technically, INSIDE TRACK is a police procedural. Realistically, the police and their procedures play a minor role in the telling of the story. The focus is much more on Jamie Hutchinson, how he is adjusting to his new life, and the repercussions his possible returning memories of the fatal accident have on those around him.

Francome has written a very complex, intricately plotted story of a man slowly getting back into his life, and getting his life back, which are not necessarily the same thing. The characters act and react in ways that seem normal, under the various circumstances in which they find themselves, with the obvious exception of the murderer.

I had some difficulties keeping track of all the relationships; several times, I found myself flipping back to see who somebody was or how they were connected. If I had been editing INSIDE TRACK, I would have left out the prologue. It shifts the tone of the book from mystery almost into thriller territory, which doesn't jibe with the way the story is told. It would make sense if this had been written more specifically as a thriller -- but it wasn't, at least in my opinion. The pace is wrong, mostly.

I think it was Lev Raphael who said that the difference between a mystery and a thriller is that in a mystery, the crime has been committed and the solution is being sought, while a thriller is the trying, under deadline, to prevent a crime from occurring. INSIDE TRACK has elements of both, which I, as a reader, found off-putting and a little frustrating. I wanted Francome to decide what he was writing, and then write it, not fence-sit for 300 pages.

Other than that, INSIDE TRACK was an entertaining book, certainly as good as much of what Dick Francis has written; the comparison is obvious. If you liked Francis, Francome is certainly worth a try. If you like horse-racing, this is well worth reading.

Reviewed by P. J. Coldren, December 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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