A quick light holiday read with solid plot and character development between the protagonist and the son of the antagonist (who actually only made strategic appearances).
For someone who knows little about horse racing, I had no trouble following the storyline of a fun suspense within a different than usual context.

This book could be called - How to Ruin Your Son by Giving him everything.
I wondered if the hero, Neil Griffon, would even survive one man's demented wish to give is son everything at any cost. I did love that Neil wouldn't give up because he saw a sliver of hope in the spoiled son and wanted to help him become an independent, productive member of society.

Neil Griffon certainly was in a pickle throughout this story.

4*

A businessman running a stable of race horses is assaulted and threatened by a crime lord and told to make his son a jockey on a winning horse or he'll ruin his business. Enjoyable read with an interesting conflict and a couple of surprises.

Brilliant no other way to describe it.

One of the most unlikely plots to actually take place in real life is wound around a racing stable and turned into a story absorbing, instructive and puzzling. Twists and turns which are unbelievable one minute and then seem possible two chapters later. As always in addition to the extra knowledge of his Horse Racing operates there’s also a lesson in several other subjects.

SO ODD. I remain a member of the Dick Francis cult. IDK, his books are just weird, page-turning nonsense and it appeals to me?

I keep having to remind myself that if the sport at the heart of Bonecrack were premier league football, the premise of the novel would sorta make sense. A mobster kidnaps, beats up and threatens José Mourinho or some other football club manager, forcing him to put some rando in the lineup for the next big match...? Yeah, I can see it. The fact that this is horse-racing and, like, does anyone care that much about horse racing... that's what threw my suspension of disbelief.

Anyway, there's ~tension~ and father-son angst and a truly loltastic reveal about the bad guy at the end. Not my favourite Francis, but not a bad one.

Oh, and the moral of this story seems to be: no bother if your dad's a dickhead, 'cause one day he'll die and everything will be better.

3,5 stars

Not one of Francis' best

I really like Dick Francis but this is not one of his stronger efforts. The protagonist does use his head but is helpless in dealing with physical attacks and never thinks of arming himself with even a stout stick. In the end chance, luck and the villain's health and increasing madness save the day.

I am accustomed to accurate details in Francis' writing but in this one I found another disappointment. Most of the firearms information is ludicrously wrong.

Of all the Dick Francis I have read, this is by far my favorite. The son and father relationship that is presented has an interesting twist in the end. The father is in the Italian mob, and his son wants to be a jockey. There are two father-son relationships presented though. The main character, a self-made businessman in antiques, has the regular Francis character development.
Its easy to see as the first book Francis wrote, is about a fathers. This book, unlike Dead Cert having a postive father-son relationship, this book is about how fathers have negative effects on their sons and how the fathers are flawed. However, in the end, the sons overcome these father's flaws and become better people. The ending is touching.
Besides all the jockey information, I recommend reading this book.

Neil Griffon is abducted and threatened late one night. But what is demanded of him is highly unusual -- that he make a particular young man a jockey at his father's training stable. Not for the obvious reasons -- no fixed races, no attempt to corrupt the betting process. Just a gift from a father to his son, who wants more than anything else in the world to ride a winning race on a particular horse. [return][return]Griffon has no choice, not when the horses are under threat. But there are more subtle ways to deal with a blackmailer than direct confrontation...[return][return]An excellent thriller, and a fascinating study of father-son relationships. There's some lovely characterisation in this book, and Francis builds on that to show how the two main characters change with the experiences they're put through.

Our protagonist, Neil Griffon takes over at his father's training stable after his father had suffered an injury. Almost immediately he is given a gigantic challenge in the form of Alessandro, who is a very ambitious young Jockey. Alessandro's father also gets involved. Neil's father highly critical and trying to interfere with the way Neil runs the stable, so the story of the parallel fathers and sons is interwoven into the story lines. The story was interesting but the final outcome is easy to guess early on.

I love Dick Francis, but this particular plot line did not grab me.