My edition of this book proudly proclaims,"The best of his bestsellers,it's a corker." It begins dramatically enough,after that it loses steam.Not bad,but in comparison with many of his other books,it doesn't stand out for me.

I do enjoy Dick Francis books. I read them voraciously as a schoolboy and they still hold up well even today. (Although, like many vintage thrillers, modern tech like mobile phones would render some of them obsolete!).

This one is both typical: nasty, violent yet urbane criminal. And atypical: the hero seems to have the usual characteristics: male, well-mannered, intelligent and an unshakeable sense of right and wrong. The difference here is Tony Beach feels he is somewhat lacking in courage.

The pacing of the story is good, the action begins in the first chapter and we pick up plenty of clues along the way (not enough for the reader to sleuth the answer by themselves though) and the characters are all well drawn.

Pet gripes with this are the continuing emergence of Francis’ own political leanings. Surely these should have no place in a mystery novel set in the world of horse racing.

‘Hadn’t he heard, I wondered, that plain clothes policemen these days were supposed to dress in grubby jeans and look unemployed?’

‘Ridger himself along with many of the country's police was having to go up north to help deal with some ugly picketing’

The second alludes to the miners’ strike which was in full swing during the writing of this novel. As anyone who lived through that awful time will recall, the police were a big part of the reason that the picketing turned ugly.

I don't care if Francis is right-leaning I just don’t expect throwaway moralising in a completely unrelated storyline.

Gripes aside, this book sits pretty well in his canon. His hero is flawed in a way that many of his others are not – yes, of course, Sid Halley is disabled with his crippled arm but Beach has to overcome a mental block and it is refreshing to see a Francis hero who is not full of self-belief.

I will offer this warning to readers though and say that the initial events don’t play much part in the overall story. They are important but the Sheikh is not the pivotal character you expect from the outset.

I have to say that after 3 days of trying to add this book to my “READ” stack, but never getting anywhere, including the help site to report it, I’ve pretty much lost interest. I barely have the energy, the time, or the patience anymore. I think the problem is that somebody added a duplicate, or two.

Anyway, for followers of the Francis dynasty, this one is interesting and educational, and atypical in that it’s only marginally involving the racing industry and mostly about whiskey and wine shipments that have gone missing, with racetrack locations and some familiar characters. If you’ve missed this one, it’s a fairly quick read and the audible version is excellent.

This is an excellent, entertaining read! Dick Francis at his best, if I say so myself.

Our hero, Tony Beach, is, as are many of Francis' heroes, an underachiever. Smart, knowledgeable, accomplished, but not terribly confident, Tony has been shaken by the recent death of his wife. His wine shop is successful, but not terribly fulfilling. He takes a load of wine and other potables, as well as glasses and snacks, to a lawn party given by a horse trainer customer, which all seems terribly normal, until horror strikes.

Each step following more or less logically from the last, Tony sets off on a journey investigating drinks that aren't what their labels say they should be. We learn quite a bit about the wine and liquor business, while solving a case of fraud that has led to murder. Along the way, Tony Beach finds out more about courage and cowardice than he ever wanted to know.

Excellent entertainment!

Typical formulaic mystery. I wasn’t pulled in.

I wanted to give this author a try. So now I’ve read two of his books and I’m done. He’s just not for me. He writes straight mystery. I want more interesting characters, relationship development, and dialogue. There was potential for Tony and the private detective Gerard to be unusual or have an interesting relationship, but that wasn’t done.
tttttttttt
This is a story about a good guy investigating, being in danger, eventually figuring out the mystery, and catching the bad guys. The liquor store owner Tony is asked to help the cops and a private detective Gerard by taste testing beverages to determine fakes. Yet Tony is the one who figures things out and catches the bad guys using his brain with some bravery. Tony is smarter-and-better-at-detecting than the detectives. Ok I should accept that. This is the hero. But for some reason I wasn’t intrigued. A couple of times I was annoyed with good guys doing something stupid which put them in danger. A couple of times Tony discovered something and tried to call the cops or Gerard, but they weren’t there, so he had to wait before he could pass on information - hmmm more suspense. This just didn’t do it for me. It was written nearly thirty years ago. I believe Francis is/was a popular author. I wonder if it was because there weren’t as many authors back then doing what’s being done today. I’ve been spoiled by current mystery suspense authors such as Michael Connelly, John Grisham, Stieg Larsson, and others. With this author I feel like I’m doing a jigsaw puzzle - find the pieces, put them together, after a few hours you are done - something to do when there’s nothing else to do.

NARRATOR:
The narrator Simon Prebble has a British accent. He was ok but not great. As far as British accented narrators go, I prefer Eve Matheson.

DATA:
Unabridged audiobook reading time: 9 hrs and 43 mins. Swearing language: strong, but rarely used. Sexual content: none other than one scene where Tony recalls the joy of having sex with his wife. Setting: around 1985 England. Copyright: 1985. Genre: mystery suspense.

I struggled a bit with this book, but I don’t blame the book entirely. I was reading it during a very busy time of the semester when I had to put it down in favor of required material. Still, I tried to read as much as possible and got into the story enough to continue.
This is the first novel I’ve read by this author, though he has published many, and is/was evidently a serious fan of horse racing and wine, and he displays his intimate knowledge of both here as they form the basis of much of the location and plot points. The protagonist is a respected wine merchant who has lost his wife to childbirth, and he reminisces often about his marriage and how much he misses her, though really, that plays no role in the story. The crisis begins at a charity event held by one of his customers at his huge horse stable home and estate. A major Arabic horse enthusiast is in attendance, along with some important local businessmen. All of a sudden, while our protagonist is at his van, a huge horse trailer somehow gets loose, tramples down the hill and into the tent, killing many of its inhabitants, including this very wealthy sheik. Of course, the sheik is a red herring and plays absolutely NO role in this story, which I found shameful as so much of the protagonist’s time, not to mention the police, is wrapped up into figuring out who would want to murder this guy.
The story then gets a little confusing, but ultimately it centers around stolen wine, stolen tankers, and cheap booze being sold for profit at various bars in the area.
My problem with this “detective” story is that the hero of the story isn’t a detective. He isn’t a former policeman. He isn’t involved in any way, in law enforcement. He isn’t a private detective. He’s just an average guy who sells wine, how and why he becomes so important to the police and others, and even a victim of crime himself, is a mystery to me. Perhaps he just knows too much about wine? For half of the novel I kept waiting for the initial crime to be solved...who released the horse trailer and killed all the people in the tent? Well, don’t hold your breath, because we never find out!! I don’t know if the author just forgot his initial crime?...I cannot imagine why he would never get around to completely explaining what happened. I mean...we know what he bad guys are at the end, but what they did at that event, and how they did it, continues a mystery to me, and that disappoints me.
The protagonist is intelligent, but he doesn’t possess any special skills that would cause him to solve the mystery, aside from his knowledge of wine and the wine industry. In this way, he’s just not a terribly interesting character. The story was well written, and sucked me in enough to where I wanted to know what happened, but since I started reading this I purchased two other novels from the author (as I was intrigued at first), and to be fair, I’m going to give this guy another chance. It’s possible the length of time in between my readings affected my view of this novel (thus proving Poe’s theory correct, that a good story should be read if not in one sitting, then at least the least amount of time possible). I’ll give this three stars...nothing more, nothing less.

Dick Francis novels are always enjoyable and this is one of his better ones. It is one of those stories where the protagonist is on the periphery of the horse racing world. The title of the book is a double entendre ... or triple. Tony Beach is a wine merchant who has a small shop. Up until six months ago he happily ran the shop with his wife when she died of an brain aneurysm while six months pregnant. Now he is just going through the motions. He opens the shop in the morning, smiles at the customers and says the right things, and at the end of the day returns to his empty house. His father and his grandfather were brave men. They showed their courage on the battlefield and on the horse racing track. Tony doubts his own courage. Proof in this story can be a reference to the alcohol content of the wines and spirits that Tony sells. It is also about courage.

The story opens with Tony catering a party thrown by a customer who is a horse trainer. There he is approached by the horse trainer's assistant with a problem. One of the owners of a horse with the trainer also owns a restaurant. The horse trainer, his wife, and the assistant recently had dinner at the restaurant. The assistant is concerned because he ordered an expensive Scotch and what he got wasn't the real deal. He would like Tony to check out the restaurant and see if they are selling bogus liquor. If so he can approach the owner and tell him he is being cheated. Tony listens but he is busy catering the party. Moments later a horse trailer rolls down a hill and crashes into the tent where the guests are gathered. There are multiple deaths and injuries. Among the dead is the restaurant owner. Among the injured is the horse trainer and his assistant. Tony tries his best to rescue those who are trapped and injured. He is assisted by another guest named Gerard McGregor.

Afterwards McGregor approaches Tony. It turns out that he is a private investigator whose client owns a trucking firm. It seems that several tanker trucks that had been transporting Scotch to a bottling plant had been hijacked. The horse trainer's wife had a lot of praise for Tony and McGregor would like his help. The police are also asking Tony for his help. There is, of course, a connection between the bogus liquor in the restaurant and the hijacked trucks. A lot of money is involved and Tony soon finds that assisting McGregor and the police puts him in danger. Including attempts on his life and a climatic scene that will provide the proof that Tony has the courage that he often questioned.

Tony Beach is a typical Dick Francis protagonist. Very likable, quiet, intelligent. A good guy. The kind of guy you would like to know. Someone who is dependable and who can be counted on to do the right thing. And along the way he learns some things about himself.

I enjoyed rereading this Dick Francis thriller about a man who owns and runs a liquor store and who becomes involved in a criminal investigation largely due to his wine (and whiskey) tasting skills. As always, there’s also a horsey element to the story.

This was the second book I read by Dick Francis, and I quickly became a solid fan of this writer. (Reflex was the first of his I read). His books are entertaining, educational, fun, serious, and have my favorite ingredient: the main character is someone you identify with, you put yourself in their shoes, and you care what happens to them. They are usually an unexceptional, average person, with possibly one skill that sets them apart from the other characters, and with this skill or talent, they do something heroic. Francis' books leave you feeling good, and give you hope that we can do the right thing, do something to help others, even if we are just an "average" person. The plot is usually well done and not too easy to work out, and if it is, you forgive him because the writing is so well done.

Picked this up after running out of books in Japan. Every hole-in-the-wall bookstore was filled with Francis. Paced well and was full of action.

Full of the usual suspects: the gruff slightly obvious police detective who asks Tom the wine merchant expositional questions, the overly fussy older lady who helps with his store etc

Like a classic Agatha Christie, the pieces all fit perfectly together at the end. The pen knife Tom receives as a gift halfway through is in his pocket at just the right moment in the final scuffle.

I don't usually condemn books for old white man syndrome but Francis deserves it.

Besides a tough old pub owner, every female character is a damsel in distress, constantly uttering lines like "oh dear" and demanding men save them from social situations. Tom's internal character arc is becoming as brave as his army officer father. The owner of the Chinese restaurant next door "bows" to everyone...the list goes on

The only redeeming quality was learning a lot about owning a wine shop and making whiskey!

The man character is a wine merchant who becomes involved in the theft of whiskey and the deaths of a number of the horse racing crowd at an outdoor party when a runaway horse van crashes into the tent killing a number of people. As always with a Dick Francis novel, there is a horse racing connection, but as a side plot rather than the main plot. I love his books, his writing style is easy to read and the plot lines have a bit of a twist but don't get overly complicated. There are a few characters that are well developed. Good light reading and a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

Dick Francis always spins an enjoyable yarn. This time he steps mostly outside of the horse racing business to explore the wine and liquor trade in an intriguing mystery surrounding counterfeit alcoholic beverages and missing tanker trucks. The mystery, as always, is first rate, but it is our self-doubting protagonist, Tony, that makes this story great. Tony is the son and grandson of war heroes who disappointed his family by not having the same fire in his veins. He's even disappointed in himself, although I'm not certain he recognizes that. He also fails to recognize his own quiet courage as he steps up again and again and accepts grave personal peril as he investigates the crime. The character growth is believable and the ending will bring a tear to your eye.