Good character delineation

Complex plot and characters. Interest aspect of horse racing described.
Great scientific discussion of ticks and the life cycle of the damage they do.

Great read.

It is always a pleasure to read a Duck Francis novel! I know nothing about horse racing but am fascinated by all of the interesting and educational information found in his books about the many facets surrounding the horse racing industry. I would definitely recommend all of the books written by this author.it

Seriously, nothing exciting happens in this book. He talks forever about the boring bits and just sort of skims over the interesting parts. Gosh, I wanted the main character to just stop thinking about everything.

While the book itself is not poorly written, it's definitely not written as a thriller, which is what I assumed when I picked it up. The book has quick pacing, but due to the way it's written I found myself bored through the vast majority of it.

It doesn't age well, having almost an entire chapter devoted to explaining computer viruses. I will concede that at the time this book was written they were less common and less known about, but when you're reading it in 2018 it's much less worth the time it takes to read that portion.

The main character wasn't engaging. In fact, I hated him. The events of the book seemed to happen around him, rather than include him, and I was wildly more interested in almost every other side character than him. Why write a thriller mystery if your main character doesn't seem to care about the mystery at all? And the ending of the book disappointed me more than the rest of it put together, writing in a seemingly important character for shoehorned, undeserved character development does not a proper ending make.

2 stars solely for the fact that it was, as a book, a functional book. I've heard the Queen quite likes Dick Francis. Shame about that.

"With the speed and thrill of the jump game behind him, former jockey Freddie Croft has found contentment in simply transporting horses from the stables to the racetrack. Until one of his drivers picks up an unlicensed passenger—and brings him back dead."

I thought this was going to be an average Dick Francis mystery, not up to the excitement of the last few books of his that I read. It took a while for the seemingly disparate events to gel together - but 3/4s into the book Freddie Croft starts to fit the pieces together. The climax comes rushing in the final 30 pages of the book.

Once again Francis spins an adventure based on yet another aspect of the British horse racing scene. This time centered on a transport company moving horses from stables to racetrack and back. The hero is a well-liked, ex-champion jump jocky in his mid-thirties. Francis creates a world for the reader full of likeable characters as well as some unsavory characters. I was sorry to see the story end. My temporary world vanished like a dream upon waking.

If you are in search of some fresh ideas of what can be termed %v_array_gen[0]% but is much closer to science reality look no further. I really enjoyed this read and I look forward to reading more.

3.5 stars. I prefer his earlier, shorter books to these later ones that are longer. The additional pages do not drive the story along rather they just provide unnecessary content that does nothing but bulk up the page count. Freddie is a former jockey turned horse transporter. Two of his drivers pick up a hitchhiker one day, something that they are forbidden from doing, and unfortunately for them the man dies before they can drop him off. Freddie calls the police and the case is closed, he thinks, until later that night when he sees someone break into the truck that the man died in. This raises his suspicions and he asks his mechanic to inspect the truck and he finds a box attached to the underside of the truck, It is empty but it is clear that it is used for smuggling something, but what? He also finds some curious vials filled with liquid in the dead man's thermos. The liquid turns out to be a medium for transporting a virus. Freddie doesn't know what to make of any of it and then his mechanic, who was shooting his mouth off at the tavern about the secret boxes, ends up dead but not before leaving a cryptic message on Freddie's answering machine. All the while, Freddie's business continues to operate, collecting and transporting horses near and far, including some from France. When Freddie's home and business computers are wiped, he knows that there was some clue on them that he now has to comb his backup files to find. In the end, the vials and the boxes have nothing to do with each other except that they were both being used by the same driver. The vials were being used to give other horses a fever that would prevent them from running or from winning if they did run in an act of revenge by a troubled teenage daughter of a horse trainer. The boxes were used to transport rabbits from France that carried ticks that, once transferred to horses, would infect them with a yet to be identified disease that healthy horses would recover from but that would put an end to a thoroughbred's racing career. It was a clever premise.

Freddie makes a great character because he manages to run a horse transport fleet in a friendly but detached way (doesn't have to like all of his customers to take their money), unearth a mystery (he really wants to know why his best mechanic got murdered), and call in backup for problems too big for him (mysterious glass vials with milky fluid). He knows what he can do well, and what others can do better. Similarly, the crime and the criminals are quite balanced. There's the likable yet unprincipled rogue whose motives are quite clear (ambition and money), and then the wild card, who gets obsessed with jealousy and envy. You can tell at a glance that the 'horse charity' business has more than one element of fraud, but finding out exactly what type of fraud - that is indeed the hard part. Some of Francis' books have a great emphasis on horses and speed, some on the betting element of racing - this book has a great deal to do with horses as lovable allies and friends. I'm guessing that he wrote this book only a few years after stepping down from racing, and was still missing it a great deal. Favorite side characters: the computer whiz with an unhealthy fascination for the art of hacking, and Jogger the thrifty mechanic who spoke in rhyming slang riddles.

tFrancis an ex-jockey has a great ability to convey a lot of knowledge wrapped in a mystery. He forms a imaginative plot holding your interest, dropping subtle clues while you observe his protagonist Freddie Croft running a horse shuttling business.
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Gripping from beginning to end. Never get the villain correctly.

Thoroughly enjoyed this mystery and learned another aspect of the horse racing business - transportation. This became a convoluted, interesting plot and it made a sharp turn in a direction I wasn't expecting towards the end. It involved "illegal" passengers - human, animal & insects. It led to murder, computer viruses, and major vandalism. It was a tangled web indeed, and the MC did a great job of finally unraveling it, solving the mystery.

This was my travel book to read at lunch each day or while I was waiting for an appt. I looked forward to opening it at every opportunity and sorry to have to close it when it was time to move on! I was satisfied when it came to a an end.

8/10 8.8.18-8.13.18