CROSSFIRE
Dick and Felix Francis
Michael Joseph, $55, hbk
FAITHFUL PLACE
Tana French
Hodder & Stoughton, $38.99, pbk
SLAUGHTER FALLS
Alix Bosco
Penguin, $39, pbk
England, Ireland and Australia are the backgrounds for these three thrillers and the plots are as varied as the settings.
When former English champion jockey Dick Francis died in February, at the age of 89, he left a legacy of 46 books written after he retired from racing.
Most were racing thrillers and in the last three, his name was coupled with that of his son, Felix, and so it is with Crossfire (not to be confused with James Patterson's recent novel Cross Fire).
The formula remains the same - the hero, in his early 30s, gets beaten up while solving a nasty crime in England, where he, or his family, has some involvement in racing.
In Crossfire, Thomas Forsyth is a career army officer who returns home to his mother's racing stables after having his foot blown off in Afghanistan.
Shades of Sid Halley (Odds Against, Whip Hand, Come to Grief, Under Orders), who had an artificial hand.
He gets on badly with his mother and stepfather, and the relationship goes downhill when he stumbles on the reason for their edginess.
A good read, the only question is whether we will see more Francis thrillers and whether the author will be Felix, standing alone.
• Tana French's Faithful Place starts promisingly as Dublin undercover cop Frank Mackey is called home by his sister, Jackie.
A suitcase of rotting clothes has been found in an abandoned house a couple of doors down from the Mackey home.
Frank goes back to the house he hasn't been in for more than 20 years and finds that the suitcase belongs to Rosie, the girl he was going to run away to England with more than two decades before.
He has always thought she went without him but the suitcase suggests something more sinister.
The book starts really well but loses its way about halfway through and never recovers.
A pity.
• The best of the trio is a homegrown product, Slaughter Falls, by Auckland writer Alix Bosco.
A sequel (of sorts) to Cut & Run, it has the virtue of standing very firmly on its own feet.
Anna Markunas and her struggling lawyer boyfriend, Rory, go on a package tour from Auckland to Queensland to watch the All Blacks beat the Wallabies.
Sounds great but the unexpected deaths of two members of the group put a damper on things, although Rory connects with a Brisbane lawyer who offers him a job.
Asked to notify the family of one of the deceased, Anna does her best and ends up back in Queensland, embroiled in the state's criminal underbelly.
For those who are interested, Slaughter Falls is a real place, in Brisbane's Mt Coot-tha Reserve, but is named not after a massacre, but after one J. G. Slaughter.
Still, it makes a great title.
Gillian Vine is a Dunedin writer.
