Francis improves with every book as both a writer of brisk, lucid prose and as a concocter of ingenious and intricately worked-out plots. He has acquired something of Ian Fleming's easy expertise in handling technical information, though his travels in Norway and South Africa led him in recent books into unnecessarily detailed diversions. In Knock Down the information was at his finger tips and the sales ring scenes are hair-raisingly convincing. Where he has followed Fleming less satisfactorily is in the increase in goriness and the stretching of improbability. He opts for a dozen crimes where one would do; as with Simon Raven, a writer of similar skills in the building-up of suspense, his imagination takes hold at crucial moments and finally runs off with him. He has now got a good enough horse under him to ride a waiting race. Meanwhile, a course of Simenon and a...