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Slay Ride

dick francis

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When a champion jockey disappears--right before a big race and the birth of his child--Investigator David Cleveland bets on foul play.

288 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1,1973
Literary awards
cwa silver dagger, 
Places
oslo, 

This edition

Format
288 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published
April 6, 2004 by G.P. Putnam's Sons
ISBN
9780425196731
ASIN
0425196739
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
29(29%)
4 stars
34(34%)
3 stars
37(37%)
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100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Auroradreamer
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Decided to do a reread. Been going to the pool three times a week and found myself thinking about the swimming scene that opens this novel so dug it out and gave it another read. My original review (below) still stands.


A solid Dick Francis novel. Not one of my absolute favorites. I don't think that the hero is quite as well developed as some others of DF's heros. Still it had all the elements we're familiar with and look for in one of his novels.
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chaspete
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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A quick mystery in the horse-racing world as the Jockey Club's chief investigator travels to Norway to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a British jockey. The day's money is missing, and the jockey has not been seen since that day's racing. Why?

Decent mystery with interesting setting and characters.
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Klad
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Good old Dick Francis novel. Exactly what I expected - fun, mysterious, thrilling. I didn't expect the Norwegian setting or the difficulty I'd have at first with the foreign names, etc. After a while, I got used to it, but it did take a little of the fun out of it. I'd would've also preferred a little bit longer wrap-up at the end. All in all, an enjoyable and quick read - just like I wanted right now.
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lastobjective
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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British race-course detective David Cleveland is summoned to Norway to solve the case of disappearance of a British Jockey along with some bags full of money. Our typical Dick Francis hero naturally solves these mystery quite convincingly.
The mystery is good, setting in Norway even better and as always the dependable Hero is great. Only the half baked romance (?) was really weird.
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yazzzy
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Perhaps I have outgrown Francis. It is also possible that Slay Ride does not rank amongst his best. I was somewhat underwhelmed. All the usual ingredients were sprinkled in with practiced competence, the devious plot uncovered by a stubborn and shrewd protagonist, efficiently brutal violence -unglorified, but subtly gratuitous, a suitably unconventional erotic/romantic filament threaded through the narrative and a worthy adversary. But while there are sparks, the book never quite takes off. There are worse books out there, Francis at his worst is still a skillful story-teller, but there are better ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.
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Nirvashv7
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Twists and turns

I confess I did not find this book as easy to read as is normal with a Dick Francis story. However as is the norm the author does not fail to introduce twists to his story which are very unexpected and these result in maintaining an urge to stay with it to try and forecast the result. Probably me but I had to occasionally go back in the story to clarify. But as usually is the case, excuse the pun, hard to put the book down because of a desire to see the conclusion
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TheChosenUndead0
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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So this one wasn't my favorite Francis book but that is probably because I listened to it on audio and I had a hard time keeping the Norwegian characters straight. Bob Sherman, a British jockey, disappears in Norway after a race. The racecourse claims that he stole money before he took off but his wife doesn't believe that. Jockey Club Investigator, David Cleveland, goes to investigate and almost gets killed when he and Arnie, the head of security for the racetrack, are out on the water and they crash into another boat. David survives and is thankful to see that Arnie has too and they set about trying to find Bob. David has the police drag the pond on the racecourse and they do not turn up a dead body but Bob is still found on the racecourse under the bleachers having been obviously removed from the pond before the dredging. But no money is found. So, was he killed by the real thief? David finds out that Bob was bringing packages of blue pictures (which are apparently pornographic photos) to Norway as a side hustle but no one at the course admits to having received these pictures. David begins to suspect that the packages were not pictures but some other important papers and when Bob's home is ransacked he knows that the killers have not found them. Eventually David finds where Bob hid the papers and discovers that they are drilling charts for oil fields. David suspects that Bob was hiding them and holding out for more money when he was killed but then the killers panicked because they couldn't find the papers so they used David as bait to help them track it down. In the end, a racehorse owner who used Bob as a jockey was the killer and he was in cahoots with Arnie, who was supposed to be keeping tabs on David. This novel had less romance than a typical Francis book and far less violent torture, which made it a nice change of pace.
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ayush123
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Like all Dick Francis books, this was a good read. It takes place in Norway, which makes a nice change of pace, and involves a champion jockey from England who’s disappeared—along with a lot of money—from the racetrack in Oslo. The investigator is a Jockey Club official named David Cleveland, a new character but typical of all Dick Francis heroes, being deceptively young & modest yet intelligent & far more perceptive than his Norwegian counterpart who’ve asked him to find the missing rider. It wasn’t hard to guess who is behind his disappearance, which detracts from the pleasure of story. And there were a few gaps in the plot that lessened the suspense of figuring out the how & why of the crime. The ending also felt a bit staged though it’s easy to see why he wanted to place it there in the snowy mountains of Norway. As usual, however, he guides the action with a sure hand, never forcing it but coaxing the mystery along, setting hurdles for his hero to take, and drawing out the clever play on words (sleigh/slay) in the title.
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