Crisis

Cook's newest medical mystery is as complicated as a sensitive surgery. New York doctor Jack Stapleton is a medical examiner, and Boston doctor Craig Bowman is a physician in a busy upscale practice. Craig needs Jack's help. He's made a mistake and now risks losing his reputation and license. Two main characters, countless minor ones, love interests, a continuous stream of medical cases, a trial, and personal problems . . . there's only one narrator who could pull it all off. It's George Guidall, who reads at a fast clip, differentiating characters with a touch of nuance and intimating emotions with a subtlety of inflection that proves once again his mastery of the audio performance. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

September 24, 2018
A colorless lead and a tacked-on romantic subplot mar Francis’s unmemorable eighth novel set in the English horse racing world chronicled by his father (after 2017’s Pulse). Small-town lawyer Harry Foster gets a new lease on life when he lands a position with Simpson White Consultancy, a crisis management firm. Despite Foster’s complete ignorance about horses, he’s dispatched to Newmarket to represent the interests of Sheikh Ahmed Karim, a charismatic Arab king who has “made lasting peace” in the Middle East. The sheikh’s prize horse, Prince of Troy, who was expected to easily win the Derby, died in a fire that also killed six other colts. Foster is charged with ascertaining whether the blaze was accidental or arson, a task that becomes trickier when the body of an unidentified woman, who was dead before the fire started, is found in the stables where the animals were housed. The lawyer’s efforts aren’t appreciated by either the police or members of the dysfunctional Chadwick family, who were responsible for training and caring for Prince of Troy. The clichéd denouement lacks the younger Francis’s usual inventiveness. Fans will hope for a return to form next time. Agent: Ed Wilson, Johnson & Alcock (U.K.).

Narrator Martin Jarvis is always magical. His pacing and clear diction are always perfect. Jarvis wrests every bit of humor, romance, malevolence, and dysfunction from Felix Francis's latest crime story. Harrison Foster is a lawyer and crisis manager who is called in to determine the cause of a stable fire that killed several horses, including Prince of Troy, the Derby favorite owned by a rich client and trained by a member of the famous Chadwick racing dynasty. Harry soon discovers that the Chadwick siblings loathe each other. They constantly bark at each other at the same time as they remain united in protecting some long buried family secret. Jarvis keeps the gas pedal down to maintain the tension, although it is easy to imagine him smiling over Harry's unexpected romance with Kate. A.B. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine