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3.96 AVERAGE
3.96 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
A very likeable book like all the other Dick Francis ones. I don’t rate it as a 5, because it got boring in the middle and the villain were like caricatures. I have a crush on all Dick Francis's heroes and Daniel Roke is no different. As always there was something new to learn about horse racing and doping.
mysterious
The last third of this thriller (Francis’s third) is amazing in how the writer creates different types of suspense. In one scene it’s all conversational as an innocent character walks into a setting of menace and the narrator-hero is trying to get her to leave without alerting the villains (discrepant levels of awareness, in other words); in other scenes it’s more physical or time-related as with a race to prevent a calamity. The book takes a bit to get all the elements in place (as the villains’ scheme is intricate), but after the hero meets the second daughter (chapter 12 of 19), it’s difficult to put the book down.
Vintage Francis. I mean vintage - published in 1965 and so slightly dated, but still a good read!
The one with horse doping. Daniel, a stud farmer in Australia trying to raise his younger siblings as best he can, is restless for something he can't quite grasp at. He reluctantly goes undercover to try and uncover who's managing to get away with doping race winners in the UK but discovers more than just the culprit.
Enjoyable in that typically Franciscan way - Daniel is absolutely one of his stoic, old-before-his-years, remarkably skilled and smart heroes who get battered about a lot - plus there's an intriguing mystery that unravels at a good clip, and the subterfuge Roke has to go through is interesting. There are some truly despicable villains to dislike, though the denoument shocked me a little - it's a fair bit more serious a consequence that in most other Francis books and yet it seems Roke gets off a little easily.
Enjoyable in that typically Franciscan way - Daniel is absolutely one of his stoic, old-before-his-years, remarkably skilled and smart heroes who get battered about a lot - plus there's an intriguing mystery that unravels at a good clip, and the subterfuge Roke has to go through is interesting. There are some truly despicable villains to dislike, though the denoument shocked me a little - it's a fair bit more serious a consequence that in most other Francis books and yet it seems Roke gets off a little easily.