Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Silver Falls Library | LP MYS FRANCIS | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Dallas Public Library | LARGE PRINT - FRANCIS | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Independence Public Library | LP MYSTERY - FRANCIS | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Jefferson Public Library | LP FRANCIS, D. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Salem Main Library | LP MYSTERY Francis, D. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Sheridan Public Library | LP Francis | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stayton Public Library | LP M FRANCIS | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Woodburn Public Library | Francis | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Author Notes
Dick Francis was born in Wales on October 31, 1920. Because his father was a professional steeplechase jockey and a stable manager, Francis grew up around horses, and after a stint as a pilot in the Royal Air Force during World War II, he became a steeplechase jockey himself, turning professional in 1948. He was named champion jockey of the 1953-54 racing season by the British National Hunt after winning more than 350 races and was retained as jockey to the queen mother for four seasons.
When he retired from racing in 1957 at the age of 36, Francis went to work as a racing correspondent for the Sunday Express, a London paper, where he worked for 16 years. In the early sixties, he decided to combine his love of mysteries with his knowledge of the racing world, and published Dead Cert in 1962. Set mostly in the racing world, he has written more than 40 novels including Forfeit, Blood Sport, Slay-Ride, Odds Against, Flying Finish, Smoke Screen, High Stakes, and Long Shot. He wrote his last four books Dead Heat, Silks, Even Money, and Crossfire with his son Felix Francis.
He has received numerous awards including the Silver Dagger award from Britain's Crime Writers Association for For Kicks, the Gold Dagger award for Whip Hand, the Diamond Dagger award in 1990, and three Edgar awards. He died on February 14, 2010 at the age of 89.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The third collaboration between bestseller Francis and son Felix (after Silks), a taut crime thriller, features an especially sympathetic hero. Bookmaker Ed Talbot is struggling with his wife's mental illness, even as technology threatens to give the big bookmaking outfits an insurmountable advantage over his small family business. Soon after a man shows up at Ascot and identifies himself as Ed's father, Peter, whom Ed believed long dead, a thug demanding money stabs Peter to death. Ed is in for even more shocks when he learns his father was the prime suspect in his mother's murder-and that Peter's killing, rather than a random act of violence, may be linked to a mysterious electronic device used in some horse-racing fraud. Ed must juggle his amateur investigations into past and present crimes with his demanding family responsibilities. Though some readers may find the ending overly pat, the authors make bookmaking intelligible while easily integrating it into the plot. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The father-and-son Francis team (Silks, 2008, etc.) turn their attention to the most reviled members of the horse-racing fraternity: on-site bookmakers. "My clients were never my friends," wryly observes Ned Talbot. Of course they aren't, since in the zero-sum game of bookmaking, Ned's earnings depend on their losses. Now someone is changing the rules of that game. Luca Mandini, Ned's assistant, reports that Internet and mobile-phone connections have gone down all over Ascot during crucial minutes when bookmakers have tried to lay off bets against favorites in order to reduce the money they'll have to pay out. More urgently, a stranger who identifies himself as Ned's fathera man his grandparents told him was killed in a car crash 36 years agois killed for good, stabbed to death in front of Ned's eyes an hour after they meet. Peter Talbot leaves his newfound son a disturbing legacy. A rucksack Ned recovers from his father's hotel room is hotly pursued by several unsavory and violent characters. Peter's return from Australia reopens painful questions about the death of his wifequestions whose answers are locked in the Alzheimer's-stricken brain of Ned's aged Nanna. Ned worries that telling his wife Sophia about these latest developments may produce a crisis in her bipolar disorder and condemn her to endless incarceration in the hospital. Meanwhile, a major bookmaker backed by a pair of bullyboys is bent on driving Ned out of business. A blissfully satisfying blend of suspense, revenge and horse-racing info in a multilayered mystery that's presumably Felix Francis's distinctive contribution to his father's legendary series. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Dick Francis moved from a string of detective heroes who were steeplechase jockeys, as he himself once was before he broke his collarbone one too many times, to a wide range of characters somehow connected to the fascinating culture and subcultures of the racetrack: a movie actor, a TV journalist, a horse trader, and, most recently, in last year's Silks, a barrister and amateur jockey. Now Francis, writing with his son, Felix, shines the spotlight on the pariah of the British track the lowly bookie. Ned Talbot, an independent bookmaker, is well aware of the contempt in which even the bettors hold bookies. But his position gives him, as always with Francis heroes, an intriguing perspective on racetrack goings-on. Several of Francis' mysteries open with a death on the track this one begins with one just off the track on the first day of Ascot Races. A man claiming to be the father Ned thought had died in a car crash with his mother long ago accosts Ned at his stand. As they walk to the car park just after the race Ned filled with doubts and anger an attacker stabs his would-be father to death. Ned soon finds himself embroiled in two mysteries, as the police reveal to him that his father has been wanted in the death of Ned's mother for 36 years. And whoever wanted Ned's father removed also wants to kill Ned. Francis again delivers stunning plotting, a vivid setting, and crisp characterization.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2009 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Say something nasty about a child - even if it's true, and even if it's your own child - and there's hell to pay. Geraldine Bretherick, a stay-at-home mom, does that very thing in Sophie Hannah's new psychological-suspense thriller, THE WRONG MOTHER (Penguin, paper, $15), and sure enough, she's dead before the story starts. Hannah also wrote persuasively about modern women who buckle under the stress of motherhood in "Little Face," but characters in that novel felt compassion for the young mother who insisted that someone had switched newborns on her. Here, everyone hates Geraldine and recoils from the sentiments that come to light in her journal. "There's a 'conspiracy of silence' about what motherhood is really like," she wrote, between her fierce and funny rants against manipulative children who torment their exhausted mothers. No wonder the police are easily persuaded that Geraldine killed herself after drowning her daughter. Sally Thorning, the personable young wife and mother who relates portions of the narrative, isn't so sure. The previous year, in a desperate attempt to call a timeout from her own demanding domestic life, she had a brief affair with Geraldine's husband. But with the murder-suicide all over television, Sally realizes that the man who called himself Mark Bretherick was someone else. Before she can convince the obtuse cops that a more subtle cruelty is at work, another mother and child are found dead, and Sally knows her own life is in danger. Hannah goes in for all those bizarre plot twists and outlandish behaviors that have come to define the psychological-suspense story, but she does it with style and wit. And while these Gothic chords bring a dissonant note to the realistic chapters written in the police-procedural format, they can't muffle the voices of the women in this story who persist in speaking intimately and honestly about the pressures on them as supermoms. Maybe Geraldine never actually answered her daughter's question about whether Jesus went to "the heaven hotel" when he died with the flip response that, from what little she knew of him, "Jesus might prefer to go camping in the Lake District." But even saintly Sally, who works in environmental engineering, confides that chasing after two obstreperous children and catering to a distracted husband can make her feel as if her brain "has silted up and needs dredging," like the lagoons of Venice. What's it worth to save a marriage? Animal sacrifice is presented as an option in NEW WORLD MONKEYS (Shay Areheart, $23), an imaginative first novel by Nancy Mauro that's more entertaining than couples therapy. Lily and Duncan, a self-absorbed young couple from Manhattan, are driving up to their country place in Dutchess County when they hit a wild boar (the town mascot, but how were they to know?), which Lily finishes off with a tire iron. Shortly after, while digging a garden, Duncan unearths a human bone and a grave marker identifying the person as "Tinker, 1902." The exhumation that Lily and Duncan secretly carry out each weekend somehow becomes emblematic of their efforts to get beneath the civilized surface of their joyless marriage and unleash the primal beast within. Following the developments of this surreal plot is fun for a while, but the animal imagery becomes stifling, as does the brainy couple's incessant analysis of their every thought, word and gesture. "Maybe I've started swinging from the trees," Duncan says after giving Lily a slap on the behind. And maybe not. Just when you think you've got his number, Robert B. Parker pulls another bluff. THE PROFESSIONAL (Putnam, $26.95) opens with a standard challenge for Spenser, the knight-errant in this enduring private-eye series: rescue the ladies from the dragon and be quick about it. Four Boston women are being blackmailed by the worst kind of cad - the kind who keeps incriminating evidence that he threatens to show their rich husbands - and Spenser, who loves women and despises cads, is happy to take their case. But Gary Eisenhower, the cad in question, turns out to be such an amiable guy that, after mediating that unpleasant blackmail matter, Spenser makes it his business to protect Gary from the mobster husband of one of his victims. For some reason, the manliest of detectives becomes fascinated by the psychology of the ladies' man, and instead of bruising his knuckles on this case, he spends most of his time wittily discussing it with Susan Silverman, the psychotherapist who is his designated "honey bun." Maybe she knows what's up with the big guy. Ever since he started writing with his son Felix, Dick Francis seems to have found fresh inspiration at the racetrack. Ned Talbot, the protagonist of EVEN MONEY (Putnam, $26.95), is not a jockey or a trainer or any other typical Francis hero. He's a bookie - one of the "pariahs of the racing world." But because he sports the Francis colors of honesty, bravery and fair play, Ned is up to the job of finding the gremlin who upsets the Royal Ascot races by tampering with the electronic equipment that determines betting odds. It takes more guts for Ned to solve the murder of a stranger who has just introduced himself as his father. The neatest feat he pulls off, however, is giving readers a new perspective on the races that are a staple of this series. The track atmosphere is quite different down here among the independent turf accountants who are fighting off the big betting shops that are wringing much of the eccentric charm from a day at the races. Sophie Hannah's thriller deals with modern women who buckle under the stress of motherhood.
Library Journal Review
This is the third novel coauthored by three-time Edgar Award winner Francis and his son, Felix, following Dead Heat (2007) and Silks (2008), both also available from Books on Tape/Penguin Audio and read by British actor Martin Jarvis. Present are the classic Francis hero (in this case, bookie Ned Talbot), information on modern bookmaking practices, plenty of nasty villains, and, of course, horses. Also present are far too many repetitive descriptions and a major plot line that merely fades away. Still, Jarvis delivers his usual splendid performance, so while this is not Francis at his best, it is still an enjoyable listen. For all mystery collections.-I. Pour-El, Ames Jewish Congregation, IA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.