"Under Orders", after 2000 death of beloved researcher helper wife Mary, near last Dick Francis, maybe awkward because more influence from son Felix. First time I liked this, read 2-3x, did not hold up. Too onvenient that girlfriend Marina can DNA test her fingernails' skin scrapings and identify her mugger who warned off Sid. Too much about his happy bed-time now vs passion burnout with ex. Interspersed with boring lessons, repetitive cancer-killed wife, stable fires and betting for-against balance to profit.
(Spoiler:
Designer dresses in the closet = murderer revealed.)

As one of the last acts in the twilight of his career, Dick Francis took his favorite character, Sid Halley, out for one last race.

Things have changed a bit since Sid Halley first appeared, back in 1965. As part of the time warp I mentioned in one of my earlier reviews, Sid has only aged about 10 years in the intervening 40, but he's changed a lot for all that. He's no longer the bitter, lonely man he was at the beginning, but has success, respect, and a very attractive and intelligent girlfriend--he gets a new one in each book, each one prettier, smarter, and more successful than the last (one has to give Francis his due: his heroes tend to find intelligent and successful women to be powerfully attractive, even as they negotiate a very uneasy line vis-a-vis feminism and liberal or left-wing political movements in general--at heart they're lone wolves who, like Tsvetaeva, are made squeamish by any kind of -ism, since subscribing to an -ism would force them to come face-to-face with their own radicalism...but that's a topic for another essay).

In fact, in some ways Francis's late works come full circle back to where the earliest ones started, and engage in some of the fairly blatant wish fulfillment that we see in books like "Dead Cert." His work, while to a certain extent quite uniform, can be divided into definite periods: the zany capers of the early 1960, such as "Nerve" and "For Kicks," the exploration of very dark themes of the late 1960s, starting with "Odds Against," the first Sid Halley book, the jet-setting, comparatively light-hearted stories of the 1970s, in which his characters have wild adventures in exotic locations such as South Africa (Smokescreen), Australia (In the Frame), or the Soviet Union (Trial Run), the intense family dramas of the 1980s, of which "The Danger," "Hot Money," "Straight," and "Longshot" all stand out, along with the Kit Fielding books--the 1980s may have been Francis's golden era--the alternatingly dark and lyrical works of the early 1990s, such as "Wild Horses," "Come to Grief," and "To the Hilt", and then the much slighter (in my opinion), almost sketch-like works of his late period, beginning with "Second Wind."

"Under Orders" is more substantial than some of his other late works, and is certainly well worth reading, but in some ways it's more like a gentle canter through a greatest hits album rather than a headlong gallop through new terrain (yes, I mixed those metaphors on purpose). Still, Sid Halley is such a magnetic character that it's almost impossible to go wrong with him, and there are some of Francis's trademark heart-in-your-mouth action sequences created out of seemingly ordinary, everyday materials. And if you've been following along with his adventures for all this time, it's rewarding to see him finally get all the things he deserves. "Under Orders" isn't Francis's strongest work, but it is likely to warm the hearts of long-time Francis fans everywhere.

For pretty much as long as I can remember, Dick Francis books have been around, in every new and used bookstore or library - the unmistakeable design of the US hardcover editions features brightly colored covers, with a stylized horse or horses on the front, because every book includes horses: set in the world of horse racing, or horse breeding, or someone has a valuable horse that is in danger; in short, horses abound. And that's OK, because Mr. Francis started his career as a jump jockey, and was the Queen Mother's personal jockey for a number of years, and turned to racing journalism when he retired from steeplechasing.

About 5 years after he retired from racing, Francis came out with his first mystery novel, and for the next 38 years he published a book a year, developing a fan base that waited eagerly for the first week of October to see what he would deliver this time. Sadly, in 2000 his wife Mary died, and it was revealed that she had always been his writing partner, even though her name never appeared on the cover. From 2000 to 2005 there were no new Dick Francis books, and I didn't anticipate he would ever publish again, so those of us who loved his stories would just have to re-read the ones already in existence. Over and over and over.

Then out of the blue (for me, at least) in 2006, there was a new Sid Halley book. I suspect that Francis went back to his most popular character (the only one who featured in multiple books, with the exception of the two Kit Fielding novels Break In and Bolt) because its enthusiastic reception would be pretty much guaranteed.

Under Orders doesn't quite rise to the level of the previous Sid Halley books, Odds Against, Whip Hand, and Come to Grief, but it's still head and shoulders above much of the drivel that's published these days. It's like running into an old friend and discovering that you are still comfortable together and enjoy their company, despite many years of absence.

Sadly, the books since this, co-written with his son Felix (and later I'm sure written solely by Felix), have been disappointing to say the least.

So I am an avid Dick Francis fan, and I adore Sid Halley. This was not a Dick Francis book, nor was it written by someone who knew his books well. In the prior books, Sid Halley refuses to show his emotions, and in this book, he is practically gushing over Mariana. In the other books, Charles is a well-respected, intelligent man on whom Sid deeply relies. In this book, Charles is a drunkard. And, where's the continuity? We leave Sid falling in love with Rita, and then suddenly there's Mariana. This is very unlike Francis' earlier Sid books, where we learn the fate of girlfriends from previous books.

The heart and soul of Francis is gone from this book. All I can surmise is that Francis' wife had a much larger part in his writing than anyone knew, and that when she died, his (her) writing died too

Not one of his better mysteries. Sid Halley remains one of my favorite Francis heroes, but I don't feel he was so well employed this time. The solution to the mystery itself was kind of obvious, the red herrings too contrived, and the villain made too many stupid mistakes. One mistake in particular - which is way overused in movie and tv mysteries - was to show up at Halley's apartment with a gun, say "I'm going to kill you" and then spend an hour talking to him, instead of killing him. At one point he even says he won't be like those tv villains who talk so much that they let the hero figure out how to overpower them. Then he keeps on talking.

I took this out of the public library, as an audio book on CD, back when I thought I'd still spend a lot of time in the car commuting. I only went to and from work once since I had it, and it took a month to listen to it with my rare car outings. Still, I can't return it to the shut library, anyway, so it kind of doesn't matter how long it takes.

This novel coming after forty other horse racing themed novels is at once more of the same and a new departure. Unusually, the narrator and central character is one Francis has used before (in fact three times before) Sid Halley the crippled ex jockey turned private enquiry agent with a lot of baggage and a prosthetic left hand and forearm. This detail is worked into the climax. It also follows Francis' usual style, the story being told in the first person by the main character.
What is unusual is that it came after a six year absence. Until 2000 Francis had produced forty novels in less than 38 years. Then his wife, Mary died in 2000 and Francis did not produce another until this one in 2006. Was his sudden silence a product of his grief or a realisation that at 79 year's old he deserved a break? Critics have long speculated that Mary a graduate in English literature played a major part as a collaborator in his writing, Francis himself having left school young to work as a jockey. It has long been my experience that most jockeys in Denis Norden's words left school before they learnt about adverbs. My experience coming from the time I had to run catch up programmes for apprentice jockeys who had left school at 15 and so missed out on the qualification to be an apprentice, two years at secondary school. I am, therefore inclined to the view that Mary Francis co wrote the Dick Francis novels. This novel and the three that followed were collaborations with his son Felix who has himself written Dick Francis novels after his father's death.
Whatever happened behind scenes, the reader of a Dick Francis novel know what to expect. The narrative is straightforward, the narrator assumes nothing and explains all to the reader. If there are false trails, the main character is following them with the reader. However, like an Alistair McLean protagonist, Sid Hally, the main character, picks up clues and sees their significance before the reader.
The style is straightforward and easy to read, no complex vocabulary or intricate syntax. It is an easy read that will not put off weaker readers.
There are passages which could be removed without affecting the story: some fill out the character of Sid Halley and explain his motivations. Some such as the fact Halley eats meals and goes to sleep seem quite unnecessary and some such as the workings of his prosthetic arm, which irritated me at the time, are Justified in the climax when Halley escapes from a extreme situation.
Dick Francis was not a great novelist but he was a capable one whose work will always satisfy a reader of crime fiction

This is the most recent Dick Francis that I’ve read, and it’s very funny, although the narrator is supposed to be in his late 30s, he’s very clearly written by a somewhat cranky old man, who always thinks things were better in the past. I also felt it just didn’t have the crackle of some of the books from his prime, but when you write mystery thrillers for 50 years or whatever, I suppose they can’t all be winners.

Not my favorite Dick Francis mystery, but still OK.

I love Dick Francis. I really do. I think I've read nearly all of his books. Why? Because he's a British guy who always writes about horses and mysteries. How can it get any better? This newest audiobook by Francis is about Sid Halley, the likable ex-steeple horse jockey turned private investigator. Halley is a respectable gentleman who always solves the crime. This time his lovely girlfriend is threatened, but Halley pulls through and solves the case

I enjoyed this story but as a recent discoverer of Dick Francis, I'm finding all the books I've read from this author have a very similar storyline: main male character, girlfriend he gets to marry after she's been a target for crooks trying to get to main character, and no matter what profession the chap is he always solves the case before the police. Anyway...still good stories. I mainly listen to them on. Audio books.

I learned a few weeks ago that Dick Francis had written a fourth Sid Halley novel in 2006. I rushed to the library and found a nice large print version. I am sorry to say that it was not up to the standard set by the earlier three, perhaps because Francis appears to have been writing it either during or just after his wife's last illness. The plot and climax were a bit far-fetched; the new character (Halley's in love!) was engaging, but what turned me off a bit was two kinds of superfluous verbiage that kept recurring. First, several times during the book Sid Halley (who, as always, tells the story) goes off on a rant about something completely irrelevant to the plot -- for example, traffic jams in London caused by "empty" buses. Second, whatever research Francis or his assistants have done, whether it's on Internet gambling, DNA, or cancer research (Sid's lover is a cancer researcher), is just dumped into the text paragraphs at a time until the reader's head swims. Much of what Francis writes about in the books of his that I've read is new information to me, and I believe it was handled better in earlier novels. Fortunately for me, I still have many earlier works of his that I haven't read yet. I really like the characters of Halley and his ex-father-in-law Charles Rowland, and that kept me reading.

What can I say? I like Sid Halley otherwise this would have been 3 stars