However, the very next morning, Gary's stable yard is torched, horses killed, and Gary has disappeared. There were several disparate plot threads and they crossed and intertwined and were sometimes difficult to keep track of. But when Marina expresses discontent in their marriage and takes Saskia to visit her parents because her father is dying, Sid wonders if she'll ever come back.

While I felt that the story started slowly and presented a more introspective Sid than that of earlier stories, the pace did pick up and engaged me in Sid's adventures.Can Sid get to the bottom of what's going on before he too becomes a victim, while, at the same time, saving his marriage? Released 8th Nov 2022 by Crooked Lane Books, it's 304 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. Chico is a repeated deus ex machina as Sid gets into jams as his investigations get closer to finding all the baddies and the evidence necessary for right to carry the day.

I’m afraid those old shoes were pretty hard to fill, thus my disappointment about the slightly rehashed crime that begs for Sid’s attention and makes him a target of those he tries to thwart. Because the details of the plot would have had more time to leak out of context from my constantly replenished brain bucket of memories. He soon finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy that cuts to the very heart of the integrity of British horse racing, and then danger comes closer to home than ever. I have read every one of his novels including those written jointly and all of the novels written by Felix. Heavy with a guilty heart, Sid starts to investigate and soon finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy that cuts to the very heart of the integrity of British horse racing.Sid can't help himself- he's supposed to be out of the investigations game, his wife Marina has left him, taking their child with her, and he's alone with the dog when Gary asks for help. Now he's back - decked out with a new but real hand courtesy of a donor that, with the help of anti-rejection drugs, is working better every day. What a pleasure to find a comfy spot, tell the world to go away for awhile and settle down with the new mystery featuring Sid Halley. That and the bravado of the lead character is no where near as likeable as it was in the last century. This is one of the better crime stories by Felix Francis using his late father's characters, particularly Sid Halley and Chico Barnes.

It was all going smoothly than all of a sudden child SA comes out of now where completely out of the blue and it ruined the mood throughout. As a side plot, there is some discussion about Sid's transplanted left hand and his feelings about it, as well as some marital tension regarding that hand. My thanks to the publisher Crooked Lane and to NetGalley for giving me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review. His wife and daughter have left for the Netherlands to see her parents leaving him free to dig to the bottom of this mystery.

The jockey is drawn in by knowing that this particular horse is an outsider anyway, so he takes the cash. He was amongst the first ‘adult’ reads that I explored at the time, and over the years I have read everything he’s written.

I've not read another novel, where the intrepid investigator has had a hand transplant so I'll note I learned a few things about that along the path to a solution to what happened to Sid's friend Gary.Besides spending time with Sid, Chico is back, too, acting as his bodyguard and so is his ex-father-in-law Charles. Ever since the death of his father, Felix's attempts to follow in his footsteps have been, in my opinion, uneven. Watching the news the following day, he sees that Bremner’s horse barn has gone up in flames, and several horses have been killed, including, perhaps, Bremner. Started reading the British racehorse mysteries by father Dick Francis as a young adult in the 1980’s.