Second Wind [Paperback]

Dick Francis's legion of admirers can relax: his year off from writing since the 1998 publication of Field of Thirteen is over, and a new vigor has entered his style. Longtime readers will be happy to find the customary racetrack skullduggery, galvanized by some fascinating new elements.

The very opening of Second Wind signals something new, with Francis's protagonist, meteorologist Perry Stuart, fighting for his life as he flies through the eye of storm on Trox Island, a blighted place steeped in guano and harboring a nasty secret. "But now, as near dead as dammit, I tumbled like a rag-doll piece of flotsam in towering gale-driven seas that sucked unimaginable tons of water from the deeps ...."

When the reader encountered details of the racing world in Francis's earlier thrillers such as Whip Hand and Reflex, they had the satisfying ring of authenticity. The same is true in Second Wind--Stuart's character was developed with the help of BBC weatherman John Kettley.

Although this is a new venue for Francis, he still has a knack for quickening the reader's pulse with a few carefully chosen words: "Despair was too strong a word for it. Perhaps despondency was better. When they came for me, they came with guns." --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

With his 40th novel in as many years, grand master Dick Francis isn't up to his usual high standards, but fans know that even a subpar Francis is in the 95th percentile. Here the typical Francis hero is a young Englishman of a vanishing breed: smart, self-effacing although very good at his job, polite and thoroughly decent. Perry Stuart is a well-known TV weatherman for the BBC who was orphaned as a child and raised by his beloved, now crippled grandmother, who remains tartly sensible ("If you can't fix it, think about something else"). Joining fellow BBC weatherman Kris Ironside on a flying jaunt into the eye of a Caribbean hurricane, Perry survives when the plane crashes and washes up on a tiny, apparently abandoned island where the houses were destroyed by the hurricane. In a hut, he stumbles across a safe containing a mysterious file folder whose contents he cannot decipher. After a crew wearing radiation-protection suits arrive by air to rescue him, Perry's troubles are only beginning, as he slowly becomes aware of a sinister scheme in which well-off people are brokering enriched uranium to foreign nogoodniks. Among the cast are mushroom mogul Robin Darcy and his flashy American wife, two old SIS spooksAthink an aging James Bond and a tottery MAand a beautiful nurse who is Perry's circumspect love interest. Perry continues to encounter danger: the sabotage of another plane he's on, threats by a muscle-bound thug in Grand Cayman. Francis's writing is smooth and intelligent, moving the reader right along, but the end of the book is more than a tad far-fetched. Still, ex-RAF pilot and champion steeplechaser Francis knows his stuffAand of course race courses figure in the plot. BOMC main selection; Audio Books main selection; 3-city author tour. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

This latest mystery may be somewhat disappointing to Francis's horsey fans as a lone filly appears only briefly here, suffering from a mysterious malady resembling radiation sickness. Perry Stuart, a weather forecaster for the BBC, has been invited by his manic friend, Kris Ironside, to a lunch hosted by the filly's owner. There they meet an American couple willing to supply a plane for them to fly through the eye of a hurricane in the Caribbean, an offer that the meteorologists eagerly accept. They fly safely through the eye but bale out when the right engine stops. After Perry washes ashore on Trox Island, armed individuals wearing radiation protection suits rescue him, blindfold him, and fly him to Georgetown in the Grand Caymans. This raises many questions, e.g., What connects the rescuers and the sick filly? Stuart, a typical Francis protagonist, brave and with a generous sense of fair play, sets out to find the answers. For all collections. [BOMC main selection.]APatsy E. Gray, Huntsville P.L., A.
-APatsy E. Gray, Huntsville P.L., AL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

In his fortieth novel, Francis introduces a decidedly unhorsey hero, BBC meteorologist Perry Stuart, who, with his best friend Kris, an amateur pilot, has long dreamed of flying through the eye of a hurricane. In an odd twist of fate, all the right circumstances fall into place: Hurricane Odin forms over the Caribbean; Perry and Kris have overlapping vacations; and Kris finds a wealthy Florida businessman willing to finance their adventure. As part of the deal, Kris secretly agrees to detour to tiny Trox Island and pick up a mysterious package. Unfortunately, Hurricane Odin has other plans for Perry and Kris, and their plane goes down in the storm-whipped seas. Ironically, Perry is cast ashore on Trox, which is deserted except for a herd of cows and a concrete bunker containing a safe full of strange-looking documents in assorted foreign languages. Rescued and back home in England, Perry finds himself the target of unknown assassins. Vowing to find out who's after him and why, Perry winds up playing secret agent and uncovering a plot to sell ingredients for nuclear weapons to terrorists. Francis offers up intrigue, adventure, and a gripping, fast-paced plot. This one is certain to please his legions of fans, even those who think they only like the racing mysteries. Emily Melton --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Francis celebrates his 40th horses-plus suspenser by taking his hero on a vacation in the Caribbeaninto the eye of a hurricane that will lead him to still deeper mysteries. Perry Stuart doesn't just read the weather report for the BBC; he's a meteorologist and Ph.D. physicist whose predictions are followed religiously by (of course) racehorse owners all over England. But Caspar Harvey is in no position to take advantage of Perry's clear-and-fast forecast for an upcoming race date; his prize filly's come down with a mysterious ailment. Nothing daunted despite his beloved grandmother's heebie-jeebies, Perry takes off with his friend and colleague Kris Ironside, a daredevil amateur pilot, for Grand Cayman, where Harvey's friend, American mushroom grower Robin Darcy, has bought an airplane Kris can borrow to satisfy a long-held dream: flying through Category-3 Hurricane Odin. Francis (Field of Thirteen, 1998, etc.) does a masterly job building portents of doom through the first third of this adventure, and no one but Perry will be surprised when the flight maroons him back on Trox Island, a tiny scrap of land he'd explored briefly with Kris on Robin's behalf as the price of borrowing the aircraft. But with Perry's rescue from the island, the mode of the story shifts abruptly from suspense to mystery, as threats to life and limb give way to a series of riddles. What errand did Robin want Kris to run on the island? What's the meaning of the coded figures Perry found inside a locked safe during his stay? What claims does Robin's Unified Trading Company (whose members seem to include virtually every member of the small cast) have on the island? Why is Perry, days after his rescue, now taking sick? And what does his illness have to do with the malady that sidelined that filly? Urgent questions, all of them, answered with of all Francis's usual unobtrusive technical masteryeven if fans looking for the thrills he more often provides think the action here trails off long before the finish line. (Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Meteorologist Perry Stuart is offered a Caribbean hurricane-chasing ride in a small aeroplane as a holiday diversion. But he learns more secrets from the flight than wind speeds, and back home in England faces threats and dangers as deadly as anything nature can evolve.

Dick Francis has written forty-one international bestsellers and is widely acclaimed as one of the world's finest thriller writers. His awards include the Crime Writer's Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger for his outstanding contribution to the crime genre, and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Tufts University of Boston. In 1996 Dick Francis was made a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master for a lifetime's achievement and in 2000 he recieved a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.