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This gets 3.5 stars rather than four, as I wasn't comfortable with the budding relationship between Gene Hawkins, the protagonist who, by his own admission, was "a couple of years away from forty" and seventeen-year-old Lynnie Keeble. I know that the age of consent is lower in the U.K. than in the U.S.; I know that they did nothing more than kiss, and that only once; I know that other characters pointed out repeatedly that Lynnie was too young for Gene. Even Gene said that she was far too innocent to get involved with someone like him. And yet it ended with a promise of "wait until she's twenty-one," with a distinct hint that Lynnie would not change her mind about being in love with Gene. I knew that I was supposed to feel that this was a positive relationship and that Lynnie's love of life could help Gene reconnect with it...but every time they were together on the page, I thought, "You are thirty-eight. She's seventeen. You are LITERALLY old enough to be her father!"

That would not have squicked me if this were a medieval or Victorian era setting, where disproportionate ages of partners are common. But in England and America fifty years ago? I couldn't rationalize that such a pairing was typical of the setting. The relationship was secondary at best, but still I found myself wishing repeatedly that Lynnie had been a college student of twenty-two, at least, rather than a seventeen-year-old kid.

I'm sorry that I had to mark this book down for the underage relationship, because I really have to give Francis props for its portrayal of a clinically depressed man. Francis gets what suicidal depression is like--the exhaustion, the sheer effort it takes to talk to people, the numbness, the sensation of drowning while weighed down by intolerable burdens; in fact, I'd say that this is a report by someone who has been through it all and knows intimately what depression is like. And Francis doesn't hit the pause button on Gene Hawkins' depression when plot points occur; it's just one more problem that Gene has to overcome. Yet the book itself is not depressing. Kudos to you, Mr. Francis, for all of this.

Mention must be made, too, of Eunice Teller, the wife of the man who hired Gene to find the horses. Eunice is persistently described as "bored," but it's clear that she's not merely bored but suffocating in a life of wealth and luxury in which she has nothing to do. Gene is the one who recognizes that her alcoholism and her melodramatic attempts to seduce him are symptoms of depression and desperation, pointing out that using her creative talents in interior design might help her. That, in fact, she needs to use her skills. She takes his advice. Mercifully, this does not lead to an instant fix (she remains alcoholic and somewhat bitter), but it does give her a release--and a tie to life--that she didn't have before.

As for the plot--it involves finding three stolen race horses (Chrysalis, Allyx and Showman, Chrysalis being the most recent theft) and the difficulty of proving (in 1967, when this was written) that the stolen horses, who are all dark bays with no markings, are themselves and not, as the thieves claim, completely different horses. DNA tests, "chipped" horses, and do not yet exist in the book's universe, and all that the blood tests of Blood Sport can do is prove if a horse has blood type X...not if it's Horse A or Horse B.

It's a knotty problem for ex-spy turned investigator Gene, who decides to steal back first one horse and then the next two on the grounds that a) this will get the horses back to their original owners and b) it might lead the thieves to betray themselves. And he's right...as far as he goes. But the thieves are quick and resourceful, and they're very good at figuring out what Gene and his allies are planning--which proves perilous on more than one occasion.

All in all, a pretty good read.