The catastrophic power of a giant hurricane can raise coastal waves thirty feet high and blow through houses at speeds far above those of tennis halls served by champions. Perry Stuart, TV meteorologist working routinely before cameras, chiefly predicts periods of English drizzle, with bursts of heavier rain and sunshine to follow. His life calm and ordered, his face familiar to every British household, Stuart’s profound weather knowledge and accuracy have given him high status among forecasters, but no physical baptism by storm. Not, that is, until a fellow forecaster offers him a Caribbean hurricane-chasing ride in a small aeroplane as a holiday diversion. By frightening accident, Stuart learns more secrets from the flight than wind speeds — and back home in England he faces threats and danger as deadly as anything that nature can evolve. Second Wind, which is Dick Francis’s fortieth book, is a twisting, spiralling hurricane of a thriller that will defy anyone to treat the weather as an everyday topic of conversation