The closest of Dick Francis's books (that I've read anyways) that resembles a classic Agatha Christie cozy mystery. Got a cast of characters all holed up in rich rural country homes, with a mix of extreme camping survival skills and murders tangentially related to horses. This is the least related to horse racing so far as well, the main character isn't even a jockey.

Did not finish the book. Too much detail about every little thing.

Marec 2023:

Túto som od oca dostala ako darček na 18. narodeniny. Mám ju aj s venovaním.❤️ Problém trošku nastal, keď som si v polovičke spomenula, kto je vrah, keďže som ju už raz čítala.

Nie je to primárne detektívka. Hlavná postava zločin vyrieši skôr náhodou. To sa mi na tom páči. Je to celé také nenútené. Joj, a ako mám veľmi rada postavy. Tiež som sa cítila ako člen rodiny.

Vidím to tak, že najbližšie si ju znova prečítam možno o päť rokov. A budem dúfať, že zabudnem, ako sa to končí.

Dick Francis only writes horse racing-related noir, as far as I can tell. I think my parents must have been reading him for a while, because this rather unmemorable example ended up in my hands when I was a teen.

This is a stand-alone mystery/thriller about a book author who agrees to stay with a famous horse trainer and write his auto-biography. A mystery develops from several young women who had been strangled nearby. The poor, good-natured protagonist specializes in wilderness survival and of course uses those skills over the course of the book. My one minor complaint is that I think at least one dangerous situation could have been avoided if the protagonist had been allowed to be smarter. Sometimes I think Dick Francis dumbs down his characters just to create a violent, suspenseful climax. I liked it overall and will continue to read more Dick Francis books.

Romanzo di genere "giallo", che può vantare alcune caratteristiche positive. Ad esempio, i delitti avvengono coinvolgendo una cerchia di persone piuttosto ristretta, persone che, man mano che il libro precede, si imparano a conoscere abbastanza bene; diciamo che, in questo senso, "l'impianto" generale assomiglia al tipo di ambientazioni create dalla Christie: poche persone, che hanno risentimenti verso qualcuno oppure motivi validi per difendere "a spada tratta" qualcun altro. Personalmente, è l'organizzazione che preferisco nei "polizieschi". Detesto quando saltano fuori personaggi "nuovi" ogni tre per due oppure quando si scopre che l'assassino è uno che non si era mai sentito nominare prima.
I personaggi, sia pur con tutti i limiti del caso, sono abbastanza definiti, hanno una loro particolare psicologia e non sono solo marionette gettate in scena per creare superflui colpi di scena o per riuscire a tirare sino alla fine.
Infine, il mondo che fa sfondo alla vicenda, cioè quello delle corse dei cavalli, sembra ben decritto e ricostruito. Non per nulla, l’autore stesso è stato un fantino piuttosto affermato negli anni tra il 1953 ed il 1954, il che lo fa evidentemente parlare con cognizione di causa. Per contro, vi sono un paio di particolare non del tutto convincenti nel finale, particolari che ovviamente ometto di citare per non svelare nulla a chi dovesse eventualmente leggere il romanzo. E, aggiungerei anche che il lettore tende a sospettare sin da subito dell’assassino o, almeno, per me è andata così.
Comunque, in linea generale, il mio giudizio è sostanzialmente positivo.

It's fair to say that Dick Francis is the most reliable author of horse-related mysteries in the English Language. WHile that may be a fairly narrow niche, it's also a niche that allows Francis to expand his knowledge base into areas readers would never expect.
In Longshot, Francis offers us a main character who is not only a writer, but a survival expert, ala "Survivorman" Les Stroud. This character is hired to write a biography for a famous racehorse trainer. What ensues is the result of a previously-vanished amateur jockey, several characters with poorly balanced mental status, and WAAAAAYYYY too much money being thrown around by people with too few scruples.
As usual, the first-person narrator is a multi-talented man of few words who is not only disciplined, but much tougher on the inside than he is on the outside.
Overall, this narrative hangs together a bit better than some of the other DF titles. The standard plot devices (a male, single narrator who is physically fit, a hideous injury, the nick-of-time rescue) don't feel so standard, as they are all twists on the usual fare. The backup characters are more rounded, and the descriptive elements don't feel tacked on. When you reach the climax of the story, Francis plays with your expectations, making the bad guy's consequences something you'd never expect.

John Kendall takes a job everyone else has turned down. But it seemed better than freezing. Only it sucks him straight into a murder mystery.

"Longshot" is one of my very favorite Francis books, and it was just as good on the last reread. Written in 1990, right when Francis was at the height of his powers (in my opinion), it is a tour de force of plotting and characterization.

Compared with some of his other works, it seems at first glance like there isn't much there. The plot is sharply focused--just John Kendall, aspiring writer, and the tight-knit community of the trainer whose biography he's been commissioned to write--and the action unfolds in a measured, almost leisurely pace. There's a good deal about John's struggles to write, about the day-to-day life at the stable, and about the "survivalist" treks he, whose speciality prior to trying his hand at fiction was back-country survival, takes the trainer's youngest son on.

But the leisurely, low-key story makes the violence and the action stand out all the more against the backdrop of wintertime village life, and the two main action sequences are some of the most viscerally gripping I've ever read, by Francis or anyone else. In fact (just between you and me), I've deliberately used them as inspiration in my own writing, because they are unforgettable, creating an atmosphere of terrifying threat out of completely ordinary surroundings that is almost horror-like in its intensity. "Longshot" really is a story of survival, and survival stories, along with war stories and love stories, are what humans want to hear.

"Longshot" is also another of Francis's "artist" novels, and one suspects that, as in the previous "artist-hero" books I've reviewed, we're getting here a glimpse at the creative process of Francis himself. John wants to be a writer, but finds it a hard slog and is always looking for excuses to get out of writing. He also gets his own hero into jams that he doesn't know how to get him out of, which explains a good deal of the thrilling excitement of Francis's action sequences--did he start them not knowing the outcome himself? In any case, "Longshot" is an excellent midwinter read, just the kind of thing to savor while huddled up in the warmth and thanking your lucky stars that you're not lost in the British wilderness, shivering your life out in Sherwood Forest. A true classic.

This was my first book by Dick Francis, I enjoyed it, it's well written with a believable plot and characters.

I'm a long-time fan of Dick Francis' mystery novels—he's so good at his craft and he creates such warm, intelligent, rich characters. This one is particularly good: A writer takes on a challenging biography project and becomes enmeshed—for better and for worse—in the horse training family and the local community. I love the way Dick Francis immerses me in the worlds he creates, and he always includes such interesting background tidbits, in this case, it's nature survival techniques.

I'm a sucker for manor house mysteries, and this one is *almost* a cozy, and I am here for that.

An enjoyable Francis staple – a worthy hero, plenty of horses and racing. Most of the Francis books tie the mystery plot to something Francis has obviously researched. I’ve read and learned about glass blowing, (ancient) computer viruses, and gold mining from some Francis plots, and I’ve come to expect these non-horse bits as much as the upstanding hero. And many books contain a couple of these side research plot points beyond the well known and expected horse racing touches. For “Longshot” I feel Francis may have been on a tight schedule. The unique skill described is survival, and you get the feeling he picked up a book at the shop on surviving in the British wilderness and wrote bits of that into this story. Quite a few bits. There’s always another one coming. The other “inner workings” parts of the story involved selling a book to a publisher and the workings of a horse training farm, neither of which I suspect required any additional research for this author. I felt a bit disappointed after being entertained in a more “exotic” manner in earlier books.

But that didn’t really hurt this story – it’s a good one. As I said at the beginning of this review, this is a typical Francis plot, and I enjoyed it. And since I bought 5 more at the library sale, all thick paper hardbacks, I will keep reading him.

This is the 20th Francis book I’ve read, and the first in paper (the previous ones either audio or ebooks). I believe I still prefer audio for these kinds of mysteries, since they tend to keep driving and I feel I would have completed this quicker and with as much retention and enjoyment as reading the paper novel. I can’t say the same for every author or genre of book. In my most-read author chart on Goodreads, Francis is coming strong in third behind Ross Macdonald and James Lee Burke, leaving Philip Roth and John LeCarre behind and Ian Fleming hoping to find more books to publish. The serious fiction plodders are behind and struggling to keep up.

Ouch. John a novice writer goes to a race trainer called Tremayne to write his biography. Tremayne’s young son Gareth and other son Perkins with his wife live in the house.

A good story with a murder, accidents and survival thanks to John’s books on how to survive in the wilderness. Frances has written a tale if suspicion, jealousy and lots and of potential suspects.

The ending is excellent. Bows and arrows indeed.