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Smokescreen

dick francis

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Edward Lincoln is a worldwide celebrity who plays detectives on the big screen. But when his godmother asks him to investigate her racehorses in South Africa, he's out of his depth. Soon enough, he's plunged into a plot of gold, greed, and gilded lives that forces him to uncover a killer and give a bravura performance he'll never give again....

304 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1,1972
Literary awards
cwa silver dagger, 

This edition

Format
304 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published
May 2, 2006 by Berkley
ISBN
9780425210253
ASIN
0425210251
Language
English

More editions

About the author

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dick francis

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Dick Francis, CBE, FRSL (born Richard Stanley Francis) was a popular British horse racing crime writer and retired jockey.

Dick Francis worked on his books with his wife, Mary, before her death. Dick considered his wife to be his co-writer - as he is quoted in the book, "The Dick Francis Companion", released in 2003:
"Mary and I worked as a team. ... I have often said that I would have been happy to have both our names on the cover. Mary's family always called me Richard due to having another Dick in the family. I am Richard, Mary was Mary, and Dick Francis was the two of us together."

Praise for Dick Francis: 'As a jockey, Dick Francis was unbeatable when he got into his stride. The same is true of his crime writing' Daily Mirror '

Dick Francis's fiction has a secret ingredient - his inimitable knack of grabbing the reader's attention on page one and holding it tight until the very end' Sunday Telegraph '

Dick Francis was one of the most successful post-war National Hunt jockeys. The winner of over 350 races, he was champion jockey in 1953/1954 and rode for HM Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, most famously on Devon Loch in the 1956 Grand National.

On his retirement from the saddle, he published his autobiography, The Sport of Queens, before going on to write forty-three bestselling novels, a volume of short stories (Field of 13), and the biography of Lester Piggott.

During his lifetime Dick Francis received many awards, amongst them the prestigious Crime Writers' Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger for his outstanding contribution to the genre, and three 'best novel' Edgar Allan Poe awards from The Mystery Writers of America. In 1996 he was named by them as Grand Master for a lifetime's achievement. In 1998 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List of 2000. Dick Francis died in February 2010, at the age of eighty-nine, but he remains one of the greatest thriller writers of all time.

Series:
* Sid Halley Mystery
* Kit Fielding Mystery

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
27(27%)
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33(33%)
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100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
merrowgirlfriend
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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At the request of life-long family friend, Edward Lincoln, a big-screen movie star, sets of to South Africa to investigate why her racehorses are plonking down the track instead of galloping into the garland as they had. Under the guise of attending a revival movie premier for one of his former movies, Link sets off to discover the underlying cause of their performance issues, only to find himself stuck in a deadly web of greed.

There's glamour, mystery and suspense (not to mention setting - hello South Africa) all wrapped up in Francis's exquisite voice. A great read from beginning to end.
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
AliveOrb
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Smokescreen by Dick Francis is an action suspense novel where a famous actor Edward Lincoln goes to South Africa to tend to his dying friend’s horses for Horse Racing. While he is there he realizes that there are numerous suspicious activities and the encounter of murder. Lincoln soon realizes that someone is trying to kill him and has to somehow make it out alive. When I read that summary I thought that the book was going to be a suspense novel about Horse racing but turns out I was wrong. I surprisingly enjoyed this book I thought it was mostly going to be about horse racing but the horse racing part is a small aspect of the actual novel. I got hooked on chapter 5 where an interviewer was electrocuted by the microphone that Edward was holding moments before. From that moment on I was hooked onto the book. At first, the book was not interesting and I started to think to myself, “Why did I even choose this book?” However, the more I forced myself to keep reading the more and more I thought the book was encapsulating. Dick Franacis’s suspense novel was a surprisingly quick and pleasant read.
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josuijoestar
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Another enjoyable addition - not just a new twist, but a radically new setting and an interesting background for the main character.
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Devilsugar
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I always enjoy DF. This was a nice story. It was a little predictable. Without spoiling the story-line, I want to say the part that occurred in the car had way too many details and took away a star.

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boxedlea
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I love Dick Francis. Short, sweet and to the point. His heroes are smart and down to earth. Original plots.
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AoiYukihira004
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I love Dick Francis and this is another great, interesting story. I'm younger so I notice that lack of certain technology like cell phones but still the story, the hardship holds up. I love that every Dick Francis book is both familiar in the type of hero but unique in the type of backgrounds he researches to use... And they play at Best 6 degrees of separation from horse or horse racing
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