10-15-00
Always a cause for
celebration is a new Dick Francis novel on my coffee table. The newest:
Shattered, (Putnam; $25.95; 289 pages), has a glassblower
as hero who wears a singlet.
Francis first taught us that menace and murder don't necessarily go hand
in hand. More menacing than a pointed gun or a steely sliver of knife
to a one handed jockey, for instance, would be someone threatening to
lop off his only existing hand.
In Shattered we meet Gerard Logan, a glassblower just on
the brink of fame. When Logan's friend, jockey Martin Stukely, dies in
a fall from a horse at Cheltenham Logan becomes accidentally embroiled
in a search for a stolen videotape.
In addition to the
danger inherent in working with molten glass and a furnace seldom stoked
at less than 1800 degrees Logan is faced with ugly threats to his person,
his business and his courage. Catherine Dodd, a young local member of
the constabulary, pops up to aid Logan in his pursuit of the missing videotape.
Business gently turns to attraction and the love scenes between the two,
when they finally get to them, are sweet and innocent and all the sexier
for that. (Miss Pym has always felt that a glimpse of stocking is much
more shocking and titillating than mattress as seething cesspool.)
Francis, now a venerable age himself, dedicates this book to his first
employer, The Queen Mother Elizabeth on the occasion of her one hundredth
birthday. He also dedicates it to his son, Felix, and his grandson, Matthew
Francis. Francis' wife, Mary, his wife, longtime collaborator, best friend,
has recently died and Francis has taken the occasion of her death to say
that Shattered is his last book. We hope he'll reconsider;
but if he doesn't, he has left us a legacy of stories and prose to keep
us warm and charmed for many a long night to come.