A review by nigellicus
Proof by Dick Francis

adventurous mysterious tense

5.0

 If this book gave off any more Dad vibes it'd turn up at your house and mow the lawn you hadn't gotten round to mowing yourself. The entire story is based around a particular, slightly niche profession which has been carefully researched (reputedly by Francis' wife) so that the protagonist spends much of his time deeply immersed in the prosaic activities of his job in an oddly satisfying and slightly fascinating way. This leads to his being a witness to a dreadful accident, which leads to the discovery of wine and whiskey fraud, and, for the honest-to-God-relatable reason that he's lonely after the death of his wife, he allows himself to become a consultant to both the police and a corporate security agency, coming at the problem from two different ends. 
The writing, characterisation, social observation and plotting are definitely a cut above, but it is noticeable that when the story strays into a horse-racing meet, the prose briefly srouts wings and takes off for the stratosphere before being, ahem, reined in again, betraying, I suppose, his years writing about the sport for a newspaper. 
Yeah, it's easy to see why this well-crafted piece of entertainment was one of a string of bestsellers, but I do wonder, given his stature, why the audiobook, which has a superb reader, has not been cleaned up in any way - it sounds as if it's been transferred between two tape recorders before being digitised.