Dick Francis's Bloodline

by Felix Francis

Overview

Another great best-selling mystery from the grand master of the genre...

When race caller and television presenter Mark Shillingford calls a race in which his twin sister, Clare, an accomplished and successful jockey, comes in second when she could have won, he believes the worst: that she lost on purpose, and the race was fixed. That night, Mark confronts Clare with his suspicions, she storms off after an argument - and it’s the last time Mark sees her alive. Hours later, Clare jumps to her death from the balcony of a London hotel...or so it seems.

Devastated and guilty over her death, Mark goes in search of answers. What had led Clare to take her own life? Or was it not suicide at all?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101600931
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/02/2012
Series:	A Dick Francis Novel
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	180,618
File size:	543 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Felix Francis is the younger of Dick Francis’s two sons. Over the last forty years Felix assisted with the research of many of the Dick Francis novels, not least Twice Shy, Shattered, and Under Orders. Since 2006, Felix has taken a more significant role in the writing, first with Dead Heat and then increasingly with the bestsellers Silks, Even Money, and Crossfire, all father-son collaborations. He continued his father’s legacy with Dick Francis’s Gamble. He lives in England.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for BLOODLINE by Felix Francis:

“Francis knows how to control this wild run of a plot and also knows how to create a conflicted character in the midst of crisis. A stunning addition to the family line.”—Booklist (starred review)

“With “Gamble” in 2011 and now “Bloodline,” Felix Francis shows that the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree…the story unfolds with the suspense and insistent pace readers expect from their annual Francis fix.”—Washington Times
“Francis ably follows in the footsteps of his father, Dick Francis, with his second stand-alone set in the English horse racing world… Fans will have a hard time distinguishing this solid thriller from the father’s work.”—Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

Francis ably follows in the footsteps of his father, Dick Francis, with his second stand-alone set in the English horse racing world (after 2011’s Dick Francis’s Gamble). Mark Shillingford, a TV commentator who covers horse races, is ridden with guilt over an argument he had with his jockey twin sister, Clare, after discovering that she was losing some races deliberately. In the aftermath of the confrontation, an angry Mark lets Clare’s phone messages go to voicemail, a choice he regrets after Clare apparently leaps to her death from a London hotel window. Mark resolves to discover what really happened in the hotel room before the fatal plunge. Suspecting that his sister’s cheating was more extensive than she admitted, he studies old video images of her recent races to spot a pattern that may identify those who wanted her dead to cover up the fraud. Fans will have a hard time distinguishing this solid thriller from the father’s work. Agent: Philippa Brophy, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

[Felix Francis] has one priceless advantage. He couldn’t have had a better teacher.”—The Washington Times

Praise for Dick Francis’s Gamble
 
“[Felix] Francis…proves himself more than capable of carrying on the family legacy alone...Francis shares his father's gift for brisk storytelling—and for creating a sympathetic, wounded, but determined hero.”—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

When race caller and television producer Mark Shillingford accuses twin sister Clare, an accomplished jockey, of throwing a race, she storms off—and later is found dead beneath the balcony of her London hotel. Another horse-race novel from Francis, who's following in his Edgar Award—winning father's hoof prints.

Library Journal

The late Dick Francis' son and sometime collaborator follows his first solo canter (Dick Francis's Gamble, 2011) with more of the same. Once upon a time, Mark Shillingford and his twin sister, Clare, both wanted to be jockeys. Clare succeeded, Mark didn't. But since he still follows his twin's races both personally and professionally, as an announcer and television interviewer, he's on hand to call a race Clare deliberately loses, though no one else notices. Over a tense dinner afterward, Clare doesn't deny her guilt, passing her behavior off as no big deal, something she's done perhaps four or five times before. Several hours later, she's dead after a header from the balcony of a London hotel. Did she fall, or was she pushed--and what was she doing in Park Lane in the first place when she'd told Mark she was going straight to her Newmarket home? Cold-shouldered by both the police, who blandly assume from a note she left behind that Clare killed herself, and his domineering father, whose only reaction to his youngest daughter's death is angry gloom, Mark resolves to get to the bottom of the mystery. It's just as well that he's developing a new interest, since his married lover is about to drop him and his job is threatened by a hungry rival. Mark's inquiries will bring him up against a spiteful racing correspondent, several questionable trainers, a possible new romance and an ingenious serial blackmailer who seems intent on continuing his extortion demands from beyond the grave. The usual pleasures of Francis father and son, from inside dope about announcing races to carefully controlled bursts of physical violence, fly by with all the speed of a promising filly on her second one-mile run.

Kirkus Reviews