SOURCE: "Bloody Sunday," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 12, 1989, p. 6.

In the following excerpt, Champlin calls the plot of Francis's The Edge "contrived and confining," but asserts that the novel "is suspenseful as always and interesting."

Dick Francis is now indubitably one of the superstars among mystery/thriller writers: 200,000 first printings, major ad budgets, the works. The Edge, by my reckoning his 27th thriller, has a more contrived and confining plot than his others, but it is suspenseful as always and interesting because there is less of the ultra-graphic violence that has been one of Francis' hallmarks.

A bored and wealthy young horse lover has enlivened his life by getting into undercover work around racecourses. Now he is posing as a waiter aboard "The Great Intercontinental Mystery Race Train," bound west from Ottawa with a cargo of prize horses and their owners, aiming toward a kind of...