Really good even if the final confrontation with the bad guy was a bit too overdone, almost James Bond-esque.

Really good!

Nice mystery. Really enjoyed the style and pace of Dick Francis

Dick Francis is one of my cozy mystery favorites

Ich weiß schon lange, dass Dick Francis meine Erwartungen immer irgendwie übertreffen wird. Aber das hier. Das habe ich so absolut nicht kommen gesehen. Die letzten 100 Seiten konnte ich nicht mehr weglegen, habe jedes Gespräch abgewimmelt, in das man mich mit reinziehen wollte, und jetzt sitze ich sprachlos und mit Tränen in den Augen da, nicht wissend wie ich dieses Buch jemals wieder loslassen soll - physisch und psychisch.

Reliving again the racing world with Dick Francis is always fun. He knew the business and the books were full of information on racing at that time. I suppose some things have changed. I have read all of the Dick Francis books, some more than once, and I am following with the Felix Francis books.

Slow start bit eventually got into it. Don't think I'll read all his books but would pick up when traveling and buying in a thrift store. I have heard from others they are all about horse racing.

This is a 1968 book by the famous British crime writer Dick Francis, who is renowned for his mystery novels that focus on horse racing in England. Francis has won the Edgar Award for Best Novel three times (Forfeit in 1970, Whip Hand in 1981 and Come to Grief in 1996). This book is a very enjoyable read. It is very well written and is fast paced. The book has an interesting mystery plot, plenty of thriller action, as well as a poignant portrayal of human sufferings and love. The setting is in London in late 1960s with a newspaper reporter as the main character. Like most Francis book, it goes into a lot of details of different aspects of horse racing. In this case, the focus is on ante-post betting and how fraudsters can exploit the system. The title of the book is very apt. Forfeit is the key to the whole scheme.

Spoiler Alert. The story is about how the book’s protagonist, a newspaper reporter called James Tyrone, who writes for the Sunday sports section of the newspaper the Blaze and cover horse-racings, uncovered a lucrative fraud scheme undertaken by some very unsavory characters. As Tyrone investigates and starts exposing the scheme in his weekly articles, he was threatened, beaten, kidnapped, and almost killed. In the end, he single-handedly unraveled the scheme, disposed of all the bad guys, and saved a horse. The fraud scheme is the brainchild of an international criminal called Vjoersterod from South Africa and exploits a quirk in how ante-post betting works. Basically, ante-post betting allows the public to bet on a horse many weeks in advance of the race. However, if the horse subsequently does not run in the race, the bet will be considered a losing bet and the bet money will be forfeited to the betting shop. What Vjoersterod did was first to buy up a small chain of betting shops in England run by a small-time crook Charlie Boston. He then blackmailed a newspaper sports writer Bert Checkov and forced him to talk up a horse Vjoersterod has chosen so the public got excited about it as an ante-post favorite and bet a lot of money on it. Charlie Boston could then take in a lot of those bets in his shops. A few days before race day when it is in the forfeit period, Vjoersterod would either threaten, blackmail or strongarm the owner of the chosen horse so that the horse is withdrawn from the race. All ante-post bets are therefore automatically forfeited to Vjoersterod. His scheme ran for a year and was quite successful. Finally, racing authorities got suspicious and was going to interview Checkov to figure out why a high percentage of the horses he pitched for ante-post bets ended up being scratched before the race. Checkov committed suicide shortly after he made some cryptic remarks to Tyrone suggesting he was being blackmailed into writing those articles. Tyrone started investigating and ultimately broke the crime ring and was successful in hiding the talked-up horse and the owner’s family from Vjoersterod so he cannot get to it to get it scratched before the race.

The book is also very interesting with a side story about polio and its impact on its patients and their families. Tyrone’s wife Elizabeth is 90% paralyzed from polio and is confined to her bed at home with a Spiroshell iron lung. Francis did a good job portraying the life of the caregiving husband and the toll it takes on the couple and the people around them, as well as Tyrone’s constant struggle balancing various aspects of life. A very moving side story to balance out the action and crime solving aspect of the book and changes the tempo of the book periodically.

classic Francis - an investigative journalist tries to take down a group of crooks at the racetrack. The usual confrontation where stubborness and brains overcomes brutality and greed. A very touching love story elevates this volume slightly above other books by the author.

Ugh. I appreciate Francis trying to mix up his formula a bit and move away from stoic-young-man-foiling-a-deadly-racing-plot-while-falling-in-love-with-a-young-woman, but frequently his innovations make for a disturbing experience rather than an improvement. Forfeit is a thoroughly unpleasant novel in nearly every way. The most distasteful element is the romance as our protagonist cheats on his disabled wife multiple times and feels incredibly guilty about it the whole time. I hated being forced to watch the entire joyless process as he hates himself for doing it while admitting that he is perfectly ready to do it again at the first opportunity. Part of what makes it so horrible and depressing is how much the hero supposedly loves his wife, though little of the affection is shown on the page. He declares how much he loves her and how little he wants to leave her, but Dick Francis is unable to show how she could have inspired so much affection. Instead, he portrays her as weak, whiny, worried, and an endlessly selfish burden to her husband whose care constantly annoys him and hampers him every time it comes up. Francis somehow seemed incapable of showing any solace that could come from the union; he showed no cute conversations, no evenings of peace and rest, but instead only endless irritation and inconvenience to both parties.
tWith Francis’ usually engaging romance turned into a depressing family drama that I found no fun to watch, I turned with hope to the racing scandal that our hero hopes to uncover. Unfortunately, this is also not up to Francis’ usual standard. The plot itself is believable enough, though not at all difficult to figure out once the investigative journalist is put on the right track, but the fact that the villain goes to such pains to quiet one journalist, even after the story is bound to break, is ridiculous. They beat him up and both threaten and determine on murder, ensuring a criminal trial, all without any hope that they will be able to continue running their racket. It is so clearly destined for failure that I don’t see how it could have been worked in the past as Francis claimed. Such bold rogues would have been caught and brought to justice long before. The journalist himself took ridiculous risks and convinced his paper to expend an enormous amount of money just to protect a single horse (when the story would have worked well either way, and possibly better if the horse had been taken out of commission!). Everything felt very contrived so that the investigating journalist, though already having broken the story, would take personal responsibility for the villain’s plans failing so that he could have a melodramatic confrontation at the end. I didn’t believe in it and it was bolstered by one of Francis’ weakest and most forgettable villains.
tThere were some enjoyable side characters, including an irascible small-time trainer and his eccentric family members, but Francis usually makes his stories work by bouncing back and forth between a blossoming romance and an investigation that constantly turns up new and ever more dangerous clues until the scandal is revealed, but here the romance was depressing and disgusting, and the scandal was transparent and unbelievable. Neither half of the novel worked well, and there was little else to make this story enjoyable. Definitely not one of Francis’ best efforts.

A reporter stumbles upon the story he wasn't expecting while doing a fluff piece for a magazine.

This is one of my favorite Dick Francis books though that wasn't always the case. When I first read this so many years ago, I was very young and very judgmental about some of the choices that Ty makes in his personal life. I see that shifting now that I'm older, because I'm able to see now the full depth of this story and really appreciate not only how the story unfolds, but the hard decisions that the characters make in the story.

While definitely dated, if you read the book in the context of the time it's written, you'll find the story itself still holds up. The descriptions are spot on, and the characters, while not perfect, are very human. Overall this was a great book to revisit after so long. I'm glad I picked it up again.

Dick Francis is always a good read.

Dick Francis is always a good read. Interesting characters with real problems,a good plot and some very evil villains to spice things up.