This one follows an aging champion, Koras Belynkas, who's taking what might be his last run at a Grand Slam. He already won Australia and the book starts at the French Open.

The reader is plunged into the world of professional tennis but also into an agreeably trashy landscape of sex and money, huge deals and chicanery, lavish lifestyles and manic people losing control of themselves while attempting to control others.

A reviewer at the time tagged it as a tennis Valley of the Dolls and that seems about right. It's fun but I wish it had been a little more fun than it turned out to be.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of. In addition to the players there are managers, agents, friends, lovers, spouses, servants, officials and, eventually, police officers, detectives, gangsters and assassins.

When one of the tennis pros dies of a drug overdose on the court at the French Open, Break Point swerves into thriller territory, with the mob trying to bribe the players to throw matches for gambling purposes.

Then there's a murder at Wimbledon, followed by threatening letters to the police promising more killing at the US Open. Behind the scenes the fight to take over lucrative sports franchises and endorsement deals is just as cutthroat and all of the greed, fear and ill will makes for a confusing picture for the police. Almost everyone is a suspect and a potential victim at the same time.

For a first novel it's quite good but the pace starts to drag near the end, as opposed to Peter Brennan's Sudden Death, which got more and more exciting as it built to its tie-breaker climax. Break Point also ends in a tie-breaker but its conclusion isn't as satisfying.

No one in the book seems like a real person but this isn't really a problem. But there are too many characters and too many detours into their various lifestyle-porn activities.

But it's not bad. Probably for tennis fans only, though.

The first line is "He drove with his left hand, pivoting the big car smoothly southwest, through the streets of Paris, while the other wandered langurously over the girl's thigh".