I thought I had read everything Dick Francis wrote years ago, but apparently not. I ran across Nerve in the library and picked it up just to revisit a favorite author. But nothing about the story was familiar, aside from the general formula. In Nerve I found the same type of likable main character that runs through all of DF's stories. I always liked DF's main character and this was like visiting with an old friend.

Though somewhat formulaic and predictable, I nevertheless enjoyed very much my return to the world of jockeys and horse racing. I may have to pick up another DF novel. I'm not sure I've had my fill yet of mystery at the race track with a side of romance.

January 1, 1985

Not a bad way to spend the day in bed, reading while sick. Since it was copyrighted in 1967, a lot of the things that might have happened in later novels that Francis wrote, didn’t happen here. But that’s ok, it still works.
That ending should have been slightly different though, and I’m sticking with this opinion.

You can find the ebook version of this novel on Scribd, and possibly even in your local library. And amazon, if you like that website.

3.5 stars, and recommended.

One of the oldest Dick Francis books, but still one of my favourites. I love the main character and there is a particularly brilliantly written chapter, which makes you really feel what he's going through. It has stuck with me since I first read it 20 years ago.

Took half the book to get to the actual mystery part...

Apparently in England you can marry your 1st cousin. Loved how Robb Finn got revenge on the racing sportscaster who was ruining jockeys's careers thru rumors and suspiction. Didn't love the 1st cousin love interest angle.

Solid if a bit old-fashioned. Questionable love interest.

I've read a few Dick Francis thrillers over the last few months, 'Nerve' being the latest. Rob Finn, a young jockey and the only child of musician parents, is a bit of a misfit, or so he feels. The book begins with him witnessing the suicide of a fellow jockey. It swiftly moves on. He is invited onto a sports programme introduced by Maurice Kemp-Lore and his popularity soars, for a short time, and then the rumour mill decides that he has lost his nerve and that is why he was a loser when he was riding a 'dead cert'; a horse that everyone had expected to win. Rob knows it isn't that way at all. Someone is setting up not only him, but other jockeys for a fall. He decides to find out who that person is and why they are doing it. A good read, and as I've found with Dick Francis books, when they do get going it does really all kick off!

Character-centric mystery about jockeys and horse racing. I'm not that interested in horse racing, but this author's writing was so good that he really made it interesting. Well-developed characters that I really cared about made the book worth reading. I'll be reading more books by this author.

Spoilers ahead.

The first sentence in the story is superb. It catches the reader’s attention with the jockey Art Matthews shooting himself in the head in a race meeting in full public view.

Rob Finn the hero of the story is a jockey who gets all the bad horses but sticks at it. He is a steeplechase jockey and suddenly finds that several jockeys are having rumors about them exaggerated. Innuendos about being late to race meetings and unreliable, mental breakdown of one suspected of tipping bookies, accused of betting too much and in his case when he has a string of bad races of losing his nerve.

Maurice a popular racing television presenter is at the centre of the suspicions and who is also allergic to horses. Rob with his cousin work out he is the one who starts the rumors and also has been drugging Rob’s horses to make them lethargic.

Maurice traps Rob and after torturing him leaves him to die. Rob escapes and miraculously wins a race and then traps Maurice and gives him a taste if his own medicine. Great storytelling and the second published novel by Francis.

Considering it is covers British horse racing, the book is really good and easily understood in terms of the horse racing vocabulary.
Nerve by Dick Francis --

Although set in Britain, Dick Francis crafted a good mystery that is set around steeple chase racing. I was reading the book (and the others which I will get around to reading in due time) for the set of novels that I am writing.

The opening scene is a suicide and for the first part of the book there seems to be no mystery, until you realize that all of the victims in the book are jockeys who have gotten the wrong end of the stick.

I felt like I was right alongside the protagonist, Rob Finn. The racing was real and the depictions inside the stables, jockey rooms, etc were realistic without having too much description.

As Francis was a British novelist, his humor is dry and there is little in the way of sensationalism or in your face theatrics or sex. That's not a bad thing, though if a reader used to reading American novels will take some time getting used to it.

The mystery portion of the novel picked up halfway through and kept my attention from then on, even as I reading three other books at the time.

Four and a half stars for a galloping good read. What I like about Francis' earlier books is that more than just "detective" yarns, they are stories. Each character is three-dimensional, a person with likes and dislikes, with a past and thoughts and ideas. The attention to detail is enormous, unlike some "golden age" mysteries with plotholes you could drive a horse trailer through.

It's interesting that so many of Francis' bad guys are unbalanced, as if the tendency to do evil implied a form of madness (an idea the main character considers throughout the book). I also like the fact that the mysteries aren't just about physical killing; there are many ways to kill a person while still leaving them breathing, as well as the possiblity of driving a person to lose their job, marriage, or life without getting one's own hands dirty--or even being seen as involved. The reason I didn't give this a flat 5 is that I felt the author enjoyed the violent scene a bit too much.

The fact that these books are still popular 50 years on is a tribute to the writer's craft. I know that there has been a hot debate of recent years re:who actually wrote the books, Francis or his wife, but whoever did, the majority of them make riveting reading.