Dick Francis is always great for me...relaxing...interesting...love the British ways...mysterious...but not so much so that I can't put it down and go on to something else.
Randall Drew, a horseman who has recently been barred from racing because he wears glasses (of all things!), finds himself much needed by the prince to help resolve a confusion that has to do with the prince's brother-in-law, the Olympics, and the Russians. In Moscow, Randall sees the grimmer side of Russian life, while trying to save his own, and trying to find Alyosha...the apparent key to the confusion.

Great plot.

Enjoyable read.

Trial Run by Dick Francis

Excellent book! Dick Francis wrote adrenaline rush mysteries set in Britain's Racing Industry with interesting characters and well written stories. This is one of his older novels written during the Soviet cold war era.

Although Dick Francis's novels all followed more or less the same basic formula, he also played with various subgenres, including the racing thriller (of course), the survival thriller ("Longshot"), the financial thriller ("Banker"), the travel thriller ("Smokescreen" and many others), the closed-train mystery ("One the Edge") and so on. "Trial Run" was his experimentation with the Cold War thriller.

Unsurprisingly, he does it well. There's a suitably horsey plot--a scandal surrounding a contender for the British team for the 1980 Olympics in Moscow--and plenty of thoroughly-researched action in late 1970s Moscow. Naturally, the book takes place during the winter, when Moscow is grim and gray. Funny how these things never take place during Russia's long sunny summer days, isn't it? Anyway, the tension builds nicely and lovers of classic Cold War spy thrillers will find plenty to enjoy. From my point of view there were a few questionable moments, such as the easy ability of the hero's student interpreter to give complex instructions involving verbs of motion (my intermediate Russian class laughed hollowly when I told them about him saying things like "Drive the car around the block and pick us up behind the hotel") combined with the fact that it takes everyone the longest time to figure out the true gender of the extremely common name Alyosha, but those are minor quibbles that one can expect to find in practically any book dealing with the former USSR (do I even need to mention the "Red Square" confusion in the book "Red Square"? In which the Malevich painting and the location are confused, even though they are COMPLETELY different words in Russian. Doesn't anyone check this stuff? But I digress, and in order to play the kind of "gotcha" that does no one any good). In short, another highly competent thriller from the master of competent thrillers, with a shiver-inducing Cold War setting.

Really a good read. Lots of interesting intrigue from the old USSR.

I read all the Dick Francis novels, I think, or at least all the ones available up until I was 16 or so. I imagine I've read this before but I didn't remember it particularly. It's a bit of a mixture, this one, as it's mostly set in Moscow, and it's about a plot (or number of plots) concerning the build up to the Moscow Olympics. Stuff about horses, you know the drill. They're extremely competent, I think is the best way to describe his novels. Interesting period piece as well, of course, first published in 1978.

Seemed like a good book to re-read during the Olympics. :)

So much ideology here.
A 99p buy even though my recollection was this was definitely not one of his best and I wasn't mistaken. As a thriller writer Francis can be great (just look at Whip Hand, written a year after this which I gave 5 stars to) but he's no Le Carré so this attempt to go in for a Cold War drama is fairly flat.

It suffers in a few ways, not least that his normal main character's Holmesian 'insights' tend to be given to people who aren't that clued up, but here it feels unlikely that the people he deals with would have been unable to work out the best ways to draw out the facts.

And then there's the ideology: obviously this book is about how the Soviet Union is bad because this is 1978, but obviously it never questions whether the aggressive tactics to spark revolution that it accuses the USSR of globally are not also the same crimes committed by The West (because, of course, they are).

There's a strange musing about 'black people' on the Aeroflot flight into the country and a very weird moment of reflection from two British tourist characters on Labour's views on immigrants. This leads ultimately to the main character engaging in some whataboutery to imply the National Front isn't really a big deal (or so it feels).

Not sure about the question of the main motivation being a Lord embarrassed at going to a fetish club. In general Francis's books imply a liberal streak around sex and it feels mostly like the distaste shown is only ever from characters we are meant to view as narrowminded.

Overall, while the plot is pretty decent (and actually a bit chilling when you consider what could be done in general) the execution feels incredibly false, and it has all dated horribly.

I always think of Dick Francis novels as my palate cleansers, but that's not really fair to him. Sure, they're breezy, fun reads. They're also tightly plotted, and impeccably researched. His characters all have complex motivations and human flaws. Any writer could learn from him. This one wasn't my favorite: too much gay scare, women pretty much only present as dragon ladies or free-woman-of-the-seventies style lovers. Francis did a great job of getting me to envision a Moscow winter in the late 70s, though, and it was still a fun ride.

3.5✨

There was quite a brouhaha over the Moscow Olympics in 1980.The Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan the previous year,and the Soviet block apart,most of the rest of the world,boycotted the olympics.

This book was written just before that,when it seemed that a full fledged olympics would be held in Moscow.

This time,there is relatively little by way of horse racing.A relative of a British prince is supposed to ride in the olympics and Randall Drew is asked to go to Moscow before that to ensure that he does not run into trouble.

The familiar Francis ingredients of blackmail and violence are present.But for me,the most interesting part of the book was the authentic description of life behind the iron curtain.

The city of Moscow is beautifully described,I could almost feel the chill of the Russian winter.And if there is less by way of racing,that too was a refreshing departure.

I'm sure Francis could have written first class thrillers,without the horse racing background,but he never tried even once.

Dick Francis as always is a nice reading diversion.