The Edge: book review # 8

In real life, author Dick Francis had a long career as a jockey on the race tracks of Britain, and wrote more than thirty-five mystery novels about horse-racing. This one, “The Edge”, is my favorite:

Brigadier Val Catto is chief of security at the Jockey Club, charged with keeping British horse racing honest. His staff had built up a tight case against a crooked operator, one Julius Filmer, only to have the case dismissed when one witness was murdered and the other four were terrorized into “forgetting” their testimony. One of Catto's agents, Tor Kelsey, has been tailing Filmer's suspected “enforcer” only to see the man drop dead of apparently natural causes.

Now Catto has received a phone call from his Canadian counterpart, about the upcoming “Transcontinental Mystery Race Train” to publicize Canada's race tracks. The train will take Canadian race horse owners and fans on a 10-day excursion from Toronto to Winnipeg to Vancouver. Filmer has just registered as a participant. He is widely known for his temper, his violence and unpredictable ways, and the Canadian Racing Commissioner wants help in preventing any criminal activity that Filmer may be planning.

Catto assigns Tor Kelsey to go to Canada to shadow Filmer on the excursion train, see who he contacts and what he is up to. Kelsey is expert in changing his appearance to blend into any racetrack crowd, an anonymous observer. When he checks in with the excursion supervisor who will be on the train, he learns the “mystery” will be presented by a group of actors, masquerading as passengers to conduct an ongoing murder mystery as part of the excursion's entertainment, acting out scenes in the elite dining car. To keep his anonymity while watching Filmer, he changes his own role from a rich young racing fan to a waiter in the dining car. Only Nell, the supervisor, and George, the train conductor know Tor's true job.

The widely publicized events get off to a magnificent start at Toronto's Woodbine Racetrack, where the featured race is won by a horse named Laurentide Ice, owned by a rich widow on the train, Daffodil Quentin. Tor discovers that Julius Filmer has become half owner of Laurentide Ice. He also discovers that Filmer is befriending Mercer Lorrimore, one of the richest men in Canada, also a racehorse owner, whose family has their own railroad car attached to the train. Filmer can be very charming when it suits his purposes.

The race train leaves Toronto at noon next day with everything going according to plan. The catered food is excellent. Tor's co-workers in the dining car assume he is one of the actor group, but appreciate his help with their own jobs. The drama group begins with an actor discovering another actor's murdered body. The train reaches Sudbury, Ontario on schedule, and makes a brief stop at the town of Cartier during dinner. Lorrimore's teen-age daughter gets up to go back to their private car at the rear of the train and she returns screaming. The car is not there. “I could have been killed,” she sobs, terrified.

The regularly scheduled passenger train is only 35 minutes behind them. In the pandemonium of the dining car, Tor leaps into action, locates the conductor, who stops the race train and radios an emergency message to stop the following passenger train at Cartier and a following freight train behind it at Sudbury. The race train reverses and finds the detached car about twelve kilometers back, no damage to the coupling; All evidence shows it had been deliberately uncoupled from the train in a manner to leave it standing undetected on level track, waiting for the following train to crash into it.

The Race Train makes a longer than scheduled stop in Thunder Bay, to allow a team of railroad inspectors to examine the Lorrimore's car and question the passengers, but they only

conclude that the car was unhitched by persons unknown, probably someone in the town of Cartier.

In Winnipeg, the train pauses for two days to participate in another racetrack event, won by another couple on the train. But the celebration begins to unravel when Daffodil declares in tears that she is leaving the train at Calgary. Her horse's new co-owner, Julius Filmer has nothing to say to her. Her horse's groom has been terrorized by threats from some unidentified man among the racing fans on the train.

The situation goes from bad to worse as the train approaches its final destination in Vancouver, with two more attempts to sabotage the train, followed by a suicide. The surprising outcome leaves the reader on edge until the last chapter. Most of the train's passengers continue to celebrate, unaware of the plot that Tor Kelsey and the Canadian Racing Commission are trying to foil.

There is action on almost every page, yet author Dick Francis delves deeply into many of the characters' fears and behavior, without slowing the story's pace A good read!