4.5

Excellent story by Dick France. I am glad I had noticed it was on Kindle unlimited. How he brings all the parts together always astounds me.

While the general theme of this book--terrorism--is still current, the setting--Soviet Russia--is somewhat dated. This is not a fault of the book but a consequence of the passage of time, since it was first published in the late 70s.
The story itself was very good as all Dick Francis stories are but I felt the conclusion was a little weak, as if Francis felt the need to stretch the tale just a few more pages. Deleting the last two short scenes in the book would have made for a much stronger ending in my opinion.

not dull

Story moves at a fast pace and is unpredictable. Keeps one enthralled from start to finish. What shall I read next of the same calibre?

Ahead of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, former race jockey and, I suppose, part time detective, Randall Drew is sent down by english officials to Russia with one simple task: find out if it is safe for the prince's nephew, Lord... something, to compete in said Olympics. Amidst some turbulent circumstances and a few attempts on his life, Randall will try to find what's really going on, while attempting to get used to the russian way of living.

Boring and cliché. Sounds harsh (and it is), but it is my sentiment towards this book. Another run of the mill "mistery" with a tired, shallow and overly repeated depiction of what the USSR used to be. The characters aren't memorable, the mistery wasn't interesting to me and half the time I didn't understand what was happening.

2/5

Never disappointed reading books by Dick Francis

Exciting read from start to finish. Details make you feel as if you are in Russia standing with the characters. Another great story by one of my favorite authors .

This isn’t Dick Francis’ best novel. For roughly the first half of the book, it is a plodding mystery without purpose. The hero, Randall, is on a nebulous mission to Moscow to identify “Alyosha”, a mysterious person who poses an unidentified threat to the brother-in-law of a prince of England if he dares to come to Moscow to ride in the Olympics. The British government is only barely interested in the threat—they just want the young man to stay home—and Randall is pressured by the prince to go find out if there is actually a problem. There is no reason to realistically think he has any chance of learning anything and Francis depends too heavily on the camaraderie of the racing business to feed Randall weak clues in the oppressive Soviet environment.

The villain of the story is obvious from the first time he appears in a scene, but it isn’t obvious what he is doing or why he is doing it. Attempts to murder Randall begin to pile up and for the first time in any Dick Francis novel it makes sense for the hero not to go to the police for help. His whole point in going to Russia is to avert a scandal and going to the Soviet police force might not be the best idea even if it wouldn’t trigger that scandal.

The one thing that saved this story was the ending. I have long complained that Dick Francis likes to end his novels one chapter too soon. Once the action is over, he drops the tale, almost always leaving important resolution of subplots incomplete. This time he doesn’t do that. Randall returns to England and resolves things with the prince. I wish he had done that more frequently.

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This was my least favorite ever of Dick Francis's books. It started out confusingly, and became increasingly more so as the book went on. The Moscow setting, including the politics of the day, was depressingly dour, and the satisfaction of solving the mystery didn't alleviate all the confusion, although it was nice to finally (finally) have some exciting action and revelation way too far towards the end of the story. I felt like perhaps someone had dismissed Francis's books in comparison with someone such as John Le Carré, and Francis decided he would show them. It was not a successful effort. I did like the main character, and the characters of the translator and some of the Russians were engaging, but not enough to save the book.

Fantastic audio the story is great & well told, and, as I've noted before, history repeats itself.

standard Dick Francis story

Entertaining, pleasant to read. This story was also set primarily in Moscow so it provided a good introduction to what it’s like to be Russian and live in Moscow.

A strange addition to the Francis catalog, one where horseracing has a very tenuous connection. Randall is a former jockey, barred from riding any longer with his glasses. He is asked by the prince of England to go to Moscow to investigate a possible terrorist threat against his brother in law, a championship equestrian, who is hoping to attend the 1980 summer Olympics there. Randall at first refuses but then is convinced to go when he hears the story about how one of the man's fellow jockeys, a man from Germany, died of suspicious causes and invoked the name of a Russian man. Randall is in for a culture shock when he arrives in Moscow, with bugged rooms and people tailing his every move. He meets a Russian jockey who says that he overheard 2 men speaking about killing the German jockey and he meets a stableboy who got some loot from a vet's bag that the German jockey stole just before his death. All the while, someone is trying to warn him off, at first just to make him go home and then, when he didn't leave, to kill him. Each time Randall escapes with his life. He eventually uncovers the plot, which was to kill spectators at the Olympics to make Russia look bad, and the drug that they were using to kill people by making it look like a heart attack and fingered the English journalist as the mastermind. Although the journalist seemed to only be in it for the money and was not a true supporter of the cause, it was his greediness that got him killed. Randall exposes the plot to the proper authorities and is allowed to leave the country and return to England. Not a bad book but not up to his usual standards.

This novel was quite a change of pace from Francis' usual racing fare. Although horses are ostensibly involved, the story is more amateur spy thriller than horse driven mystery. The book was written in 1978 and deals with all the stereotypical uncharming aspects of Soviet life, from the constant monitoring to the dreary buildings.

I will read almost anything that Dick Francis writes, but this book was not one of my favorites. The protagonist wasn't bad yet the total lack of joy in this book made it a depressing read.

A re-read. I read most of these (then written) at a gallop some time in the nineties and have never felt the need to go back,but this was a refreshing little amuse bouche. The hero is not as arrogant and super powered as some of the characters I remember, but he still inspires trust and is quite likeable. Much less brutal than Lee Child and not as complex as Connelly , but something to enjoy in a hospital waiting room ...