Blood Sport

7 compact discs

"Ahead of his society's time." according to Char. You just can't go wrong with Dick Francis. Unless you don't care for excellent characterizations, believable villains and wonderful plots. Oh, and meticulous research. Not your run of the mill whodunit. Unfortunately he wrote so well the stories are over before you know it.Blood Sport is particularly impressive because of how Francis portrays severe clinical depression. He nails it. I was amazed to find the book was written in 1967, when all forms of mental illness were very much taboo. Anyone who is fortunate enough not to live with depression - unlike me - will get a realistic view through Gene Hawkins' eyes.. A terrific Francis compendium. I'm not going to review these four novels here. Each of them is just another reason why I think Dick Francis was the Grand Master of mystery writers. He's gone now and I feel a great sense of loss about that. It's moderated by the fact that in his later years he was joined by his son Felix Francis who wrote with him and eventually continued on his own to write under the aegis of the Dick Francis brand. I frankly would be hard pressed to tell whether I am listening to the voice of the father or his son as I read Dick Francis books. These particular books are all by Dick Francis himself and this volume is a tremendous bargain fo. "Depressed hero stops at nothing" according to Patto. Gene Hawkins sleeps with a Luger under his pillow and lives four flights up so people will be short of breath when they get to him. He has a dangerous profession that he refers to as anti-infiltration: interfering with the planting of spies in certain government offices and research labs.He never minds taking chances, because he's clinically depressed anyway. If he dies on the job, he figures it'll save him the bother of shooting himself one of these days.He's just the man for an impossible assignment, and his boss hands him one: find Chrysalis, a stallion worth £500,000 that just went missing. The owner lost another hor