Forgotten Book: COMEBACK, Dick Francis

My plan this year for my contributions to Friday's Forgotten Books hosted by Pattinase is to feature books I read 20 years ago - in 1993- from the records I have in my "little green book", which I started in 1975.
In 1993 I read 111 books and was pretty well addicted to crime fiction by then.

I  was already a fan of Dick Francis by then. My choice this week is COMEBACK which was published in 1991.

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

A globe-hopping diplomat comes face to face with a case of fatal corruption, in Dick Francis's suspenseful new mystery-his thirtieth thoroughbred thriller.

Fresh from a posting in Tokyo, young British First Secretary Peter Darwin decides to holiday in England before taking up his next assignment for the Foreign Office. During a brief stopover in Miami, Peter is accidentally caught in a scuffle that leaves two acquaintances beaten and robbed. Peter stands by his new friends until they are safely delivered to their next destination: Gloucestershire, England, his childhood home and scene of long-buried memories. There he walks unexpectedly into a veterinary surgeon's racehorse-related nightmare. As his involvement with the doctor's plight grows, as as more racehorses meet an untimely end, Peter realizes that events from his own past are the keys to saving some decent people- and the things they love-from destruction.

Tact, intuition, wiliness: such are the weapons of diplomacy. Now Peter Darwin must wield them not for political reasons, but rather to unravel the enigma of the cruel fate befalling the local bloodstock. The trick is to stay alive himself.

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Dick Francis (1920-2010) was widely acclaimed as one of the world's finest thriller writers. His awards include the Crime Writers' Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger for his outstanding contribution to the crime genre, and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Tufts University of Boston. In 1996 Dick Francis was made a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master for a lifetime's achievement and in 2000 he received a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.

From 2007 he published several titles with his younger son Felix who now continues the tradition of writing novels connected with the horse racing industry.