Showing results by author "Dick Francis"

Violence suddenly takes the lead in the life of Neil Griffon. Following a grisly accident that lands his father in the hospital, Griffon finds himself in charge of his father's stables. Before he has a chance to get his bearings, he is brutally assaulted and abducted. The price for his freedom will mean the betrayal and deception of those who trust Griffon most.

It’s the classic law of the invader. Get to the strongest guy and smash him, then watch the weaker ones fall like ninepins. Which is just what a vicious gang of horse dealers decides to do when their little kickback scam is threatened with a spot of old-fashioned honesty. But they haven’t reckoned with bloodstock agent Jonah Dereham, a man who belies his quiet exterior with a steely and implacable resolve. They can threaten him, try to burn down his home, even attempt to kill him. But they’ll soon wish they hadn’t.

Free choice? There's no such thing, according to Lee Morris. Choice is pre-ordained by your personality. Stratton Park racecourse faces ruin in the hands of a squabbling family. Lee is slowly sucked into the turmoil, unwillingly on the surface but half-understanding the deep compulsions that influence his decisions. One road leads to safety, another to death. How do you know which is which?

When jockey Martin Stukely dies following a fall in a steeplechase at Cheltenham races, he accidentally embroils his friend Gerard Logan in a perilous search for a stolen videotape. Gerard Logan is a glass-blower on the verge of widespread acclaim for his work.

Captain Thomas Forsyth’s second tour of Afghanistan is cut brutally short when he’s badly wounded by a roadside bomb. Tom’s world is torn apart by the injury – the Army is his life. The thought of never rejoining his regiment is a terrifying prospect and one that he is not willing to entertain. Tom returns to Lambourn, to his childhood home, where his mother is a racehorse trainer and the ‘First Lady’ of racing.

At an annual party to celebrate the success of the racing season, everything seemed to be running well to form, including the need for more champagne. Then a runaway horsebox ploughed into the marquee. A witness to the terrible death and destruction, wine merchant Tony Beach knows it is just one of those tragic accidents. But when his expert advice is called into play over sub-standard alcohol in a local night club, connections start to click, and another person dies, horribly.

A dead hitchhiker, empty canisters found at the bottom of several trucks, and the murder of a harmless mechanic are the bizarre events that lead ex-jockey Freddie Croft to suspect that his transport company, Driving Force, is involved in drug smuggling, or something far worse.

John Kendall knows how to survive. He's written six handbooks on the subject. Now he wants to become a novelist, preferably without starving to death. But when cold and hunger set in, Kendall impulsively accepts an unlikely job. He is to research and write a biography of Tremayne Vickers, a famous racehorse trainer. Staying at Vickers' home in rural Berkshire, Kendall soon learns to like his host and friends, learns to ride racehorses, learns about murderers ...

The night before the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket sees the great and the good of the horse-racing community gathered for a black-tie gala dinner, cooked by Max Moreton. However, Max's food is soon suspected of putting 24 guests in hospital with food poisoning.

Steven Scott is relatively new to horses. A successful, wealthy inventor, he takes up horse racing as a hobby - a hobby that soon brings him winner after winner under the inspired guidance of his trainer, Jody Leeds. Currently both their reputations are wrapped up in a beautiful black hurdler named Energise. But just when Steven is winning at both women and horses, he discovers deceit in his own stables. Termination of the troublemaker marks Steven for his own termination - and much sooner than he can imagine...

Sid Halley, the ex-champion jockey turned investigator who appears in Odds Against and Whip Hand, is back and facing new dilemmas and dangers. The opening finds him having uncovered an obnoxious crime committed by a friend whom he, and everyone else, has held in affection bordering on love.

The house was stripped bare of all its treasures. Gone was the furniture, the family silver, the paintings and the antique china. And if that was a shock for Charles Todd, painter of horses, how much more harrowing was the trauma for his cousin Donald, whose house it was and whose young wife lay on the sitting room floor, bloody and dead... A coincidental meeting with a middle-aged widow sends Charles off to Australia, on the trail of a gang with a fruitful business in forging works of art.

Gene Hawkins, investigator by trade, was expert at arranging events so that they appeared accidental to all involved. Therefore, when he himself witnessed an ‘accident’ his curiosity flared up bright, and he insisted on looking into what he regarded as a work of art. A quarter of a million pounds worth of Derby-winning stallion had vanished into the Blue Grass of Kentucky... and a young man and a girl spent a dangerous afternoon in a punt on the River Thames.

Tim Ekaterin's merchant bank, like all banks, only invests in sure things. Now he's about to involve it in ₤5 million of prime horseflesh, a stallion called Sandcastle. Top breeders reckon it's the safest bet in racing. But racing doesn't just attract the money men of the city. It's riddled with all kinds of dubious dealmakers. People who don't think twice about breaking bones. People to whom no bet is safe until it's paid in blood, Ekaterin's blood.

Alexander Kinloch, artist, has worked out a good pattern for his life. His home is a small bothy on a remote mountain in Scotland; he paints on commission, from which he derives both pleasure and a decent income; he lives alone and likes it. One day, however, Alexander's peace is violently shattered when he returns home to find a group of strangers waiting for him. Afer a scuffle, he is left for dead with only the wind and the words "Where is it?" ringing in his ears.

Hired to fly four racing buffs to the track, pilot Matt Shore expects it will be the kind of job he likes: quick and easy. Until, that is, he’s forced to make an emergency landing just minutes before the plane explodes. Luckily, no one is hurt, but it isn’t long before Matt realises that he’s caught up in the rat race of violent criminals who are dead-set on putting anyone who stands in their way on the wrong side of the odds.

To the Jockey Club, the racing world would be a better place without Julius Apollo Filmer. An expert in corruption with a devastating line in witness intimidation, and proving to be a slippery character to put behind bars. Baffled, they call in undercover security agent Tor Kelsey to keep an unflinching eye on Filmer and his associates. A mission that takes him from the finest of English racecourses to the wild Canadian interior, on a luxury transcontinental train journey to end them all.

Derek Franklin is an injured jockey. The last fence at Cheltenham has left him on crutches. But his brother’s death means even bigger trouble. He inherits a jewellery business, a mistress – and some very shady business associates. Franklin likes to play things straight. But with £1.5 million in diamonds gone missing, he finds honesty can be a deadly virtue.

When defence barrister Geoffrey Mason hears the judge’s verdict, he quietly hopes that a long and arduous custodial sentence will be handed down to his arrogant young client. That Julian Trent only receives eight years seems all too lenient. Little does Mason expect that he’ll be looking Trent in the eyes again much sooner than he’d ever imagined.

Amazing what bodily injury could do for a man. A fall from a racehorse had left brilliant jockey Sid Halley dangerously depressed, with a wrecked hand and the need for a new career. And now a bullet wound was helping him find one. He'd been with a detective agency since his racing accident, but it wasn't until some two-bit hoodlum drilled a slug into his side that he was sent out on a case of his own. That was where he met Zanna Martin, a woman who just might make life worth living again.