I've read most of the Francis books and recommend them for a reliably good read. They're all set against a background of horse racing, and while that wasn't particularly interesting to me at first I've come to enjoy it; it doesn't overpower the plot. I especially like his tight unsentimental style that moves the narrative at a steady pace.

As usual for Francis, a good description of life in the horse business. The ending with MI5 felt a little "tacked on".

Whenever I need a little pick-me-up, I know I can always count on Dick Francis.

First of all, I always fall for his heroes. They are invariably good, honest guys with a core of toughness, an iron-clad determination to do the right thing. In For Kicks the hero is Daniel Roke, an Australian owner of a prosperous stud farm. But even a successful stable takes a huge amount of work--the day starts at dawn and all-night sessions are not uncommon in foaling season. Dan is stuck in a rut, raising his younger orphaned brothers and sisters, worrying about tuition fees, dealing with too many responsibilities thrust on him too early.

A British racing official, in Australia on business, meets Roke and seizes on him as the perfect answer to a problem: horses that have a history of running out of steam in the final furlongs of races have been suddenly winning. They look like they've been doped, but the blood tests are all negative. The investigator the racing officials hired has died in a suspicious auto accident. They need someone to go under cover as a stable lad to ferret out the crooks. Why Roke? He looks the part--young looking and bearing a distinct resemblance to an Italian peasant. Plus he's Australian and British racing is too small a world for someone local to stay hidden. Roke is offered twenty thousand pounds to take on the job--he's tempted not only because he needs the money, but because the chance to do something different, someplace else, just for a few months, is irresistible.

Dick Francis, a former steeplechase jockey, knows horses, stable life and racing inside and out.



He makes you feel the pre-dawn chill, the damp of English winters; the aching muscles after hours of mucking out stalls, grooming horses, cleaning tack; the endless grubbiness and petty humiliation of doing a hard, dirty, menial job. You can practically smell the manure.



And then there are the other stable lads. Francis can make even minor characters come alive with just a few quick lines of dialog or description and he has a real sense of the camaraderie and rivalries that are an inevitable part of stable life. His novels are always psychologically astute. Roke chafes not just because he is accustomed to respect and he's now doing thankless work, but also because he has to make himself disliked. To set an effective trap he needs to seem disreputable...the kind of lad who might be tempted to fix a race.

The mystery was really clever and had me guessing right up until the end and then I was horrified at how the race fixing was done. The villains were believable and I longed to see their nasty tricks stopped forever. It was all very satisfying. There was just one plot twist too many at the end and I knocked off a star for that.

Content rating PG: Some violence (Francis was a jockey and so he knows how to describe pain so you really feel it). Occasional non-explicit sex. Some mild cursing.

FANTASTIC - one of the best Dick Francis’ books! First published in 1965, so it was one of his first.

I have to say Australian men can be very attractive and clever (I was married to one) hence my natural interest in this story. But the ending was quite a surprise - a huge loss to Australia but a big win for England.

A good story for escape reading, about race horses in England and Australia of course. Bad guys are very bad and very cruel to horses. To they get it in the end? Read and see.

When I was in middle school, I went on vacation with a friend's family. She was an only child and soon decided she did not like sharing attention with another kid. It was a long week with a lot of time spent in a car. The only thing that saved me was "For Kicks", which I found shoved under the front seat of the family car. I read through arguments about dinner, car sickness, and sleeping in the same room as a sick cat for two nights. After I returned home (finally!) I conveniently forgot to return the book. I haunted the local library for more Dick Francis books and even worked up the nerve to get permission to browse the adult stacks (tiny local library with specific ideas about what children should and should not read). After high school I traveled to England partially because of Francis' books. To this day "For Kicks" remains one of my favorite books.

A very likeable book like all the other Dick Francis ones. I don’t rate it as a 5, because it got boring in the middle and the villain were like caricatures. I have a crush on all Dick Francis's heroes and Daniel Roke is no different. As always there was something new to learn about horse racing and doping.

Конец книги, я думал будет "счастливым", но Ден выбрал приключения. Если честно, завидую таким людям.

Andrew has to grow up quickly when his parents die suddenly, leaving him responsible for his younger siblings. He quickly uses all his talents to build a successful equine breeding farm in Australia, and seems to be a talented young man.
However when he is offered the chance to take a dangerous assignment into the underworld of British racing, he leaps at the chance to escape his mundane responsible life. He explores the worst of the british racing stables and the hazards of being poor and foreign.

Dick Francis in his prime was one of the best thriller writers on the market. His books were always engaging, his plots always fresh, his characters (almost) always new. This book, written fairly early in his career, isn’t as polished as some of his later works – it lacks the tension, twists, and surprises that marked later ones – but still showcases his talent.

It was this quality that kept him on the best seller lists for almost 50 years.

I always enjoy reading a good Dick Francis novel. They are pretty clean, the language isn't too bad, and not a lot of sex.... Sometimes I even reread the books, because it's like being with a friend you haven't seen in several years. I really enjoy the characters he uses, and also enjoy the series he writes about too. I'm not a gambler, but I really enjoy watching them live, as well as on screen. There is a certain excitement that I don't find in many other places.

I was in college when I discovered Dick Francis,courtesy of an Urdu translation of his book Reflex,in a Pakistani magazine.

There used to be an old bookshop at the back of my college and it used to have tons of thrillers.Among those was a stash of early Dick Francis books as well,including For Kicks.

This is very early Francis.There is a good deal about daily life at a racing stable,and especially about the lives of stable lads,who have to clean out the horse muck.I could almost smell it.

The setting is Australia,there is plenty of action.I still have that book from decades ago,its pages are yellowing and are torn.

But,I've kept those Francis books all those years and continued to collect each one of his books when they came out later.There is only one I never found,In the Frame.