The Edge

I love the way there is a mystery within a mystery. A group of actors is staging a play for the benefit of the passengers on a transcontinental train trip across Canada. The protagonist, who is undercover and posing as a waiter, befriends the lead actor and takes a page out of Hamlet, using the play to pressure the villain into making a mistake and incriminating himself. Accurate details about working as a waiter lend a sense of ‘David versus Goliath’ to the storyline.

All of Dick Francis’s books are good, but The Edge is my favorite. Francis always has tricky plots and humor, but what makes Francis thrillers so fresh for me, is that his protagonists are not only trying to solve mysteries and stop bad guys—they’re trying to discover something about themselves, probably to remake their lives. And Francis, former RAF pilot, champion steeplechase jockey, and bestselling author, knows a thing or two about reinvention.

The Edge has a trainload of top racehorses, their very rich owners, a troop of actors doing a Murder Mystery Play on the train, the incredible Canadian… show more.

I tend to distrust frenetic hype around authors, only to be proven wrong again and again. The Edge was the first Dick Francis thriller I was given, and it won me over completely. Part of its charm is the setting – I’d love to take a train journey across Canada! But adding Shakespeare, theater, and horses to the mystery about a blackmailer on board a luxury train won me over completely. Like all the great books of the crime genre, The Edge can be just read for the sheer excitement, but it can also be enjoyed for the underlying themes… show more.