+++Another winner from the pen of Dick Francis. A lot of the villainy occurs on and around racetracks and several of the characters are directly involved, either owning or training horses. However the two foremost figures are in fact meteorologists for the BBC. Being offered a special airplane to fly into the eye of a hurricane they cannot pass it up even though it comes with strings. They are lucky to survive and more than once. Perry Stuart is the reluctant hero, Kris Ironside is his weather cohort and pilot. PS's grandmother is confined to a wheelchair, but their relation is very close and endearing. It is hard to believe that I haven't read this long ago.+++

One of Francis' weakest novels since slayride.

If you've got a friend wanting to try Dick Francis books, don't recommend this one.

Weak writing, weak plot, and characters you couldn't care less about.

One for the completists only, I'm afraid.

I simply cannot sit through this, not even as a cleaning-day audiobook. If you enjoy watching the Weather Channel, or like books where the author's research stands up and shouts at you, you'll enjoy this. I'm about 4 chapters in and I simply don't care. If the MC and his bipolar friend get crushed by a hurricane I'll cheer--but being as how that's the central conflict of the plot, you know that they'll come through, dagnabbit.
Not a single character so far is remotely sympathetic, and the MC narrator seems to sit in judgement on them all, even his beloved granny.
I'm done here.

I picked up this book because I found it on my parents' bookshelf and was looking for a quick and light read. It was quick and it was light, but wasn't a winner. There was very little character development; relationships were built and deep trust established for no apparent reason after very minimal interactions between people; the baddies, while bad, were perplexingly not bad enough to do away with the hero who figured out their plot; the baddies' plot itself was very confusing and seemed to consist of a whole bunch of random things strung together; and the dénoûment was unsatisfying and didn't answer questions or wrap things up at the end. Perry and Jett got engaged after knowing each other for... two weeks and a couple dates? (Did I somehow miss some huge swath of time?) Perry flew all the way to Florida and walked into a house where he very reasonably might have been shot on sight, because he felt an "instinct" to trust Robin... after having met him only a handful of times - and one of those times he was holding an assault rifle and almost killing him? What? These relationships were totally implausible and totally under-developed.

The novel was highly unsatisfying and even at the end, left me with many questions:

1. How was this isolated herd of cows going to make Amy millions? Why do you need special, hidden cows to develop a new pasteurization technique? Isn't that something you'd test in a lab on any raw milk?
2. What did the cows have to do with uranium? Or were those just two totally separate get-rich schemes that the baddies were engaged in on the same island?
3. What did the mushroom-growing have to do with anything?
4. Why were the baddies (Amy and Michael in particular) fine with letting Perry out and about even though it was clear he knew about their nuclear plans? Why weren't they concerned about this? Why didn't they kill him?
5. How did Robin make this undercover agent thing work in the long run? He was part of this group of nuclear middlemen with his friends, then they all went to prison at the end, and he just... infiltrated another group? How did that work? No one from the new group was concerned that his previous group all went to prison?
6. Why was Robin's password to his security guards the same as the password for Amy's safe (Hereford)?
7. How is it possible that all of the people in the nuclear ring were unable to read or understand the foreign-language orders? How did this business work if no one could read the papers? Or if only Loricroft could manage to understand the papers, what did the rest of them do in the ring?

...I could go on. If anyone knows or better understand any of these answers, please let me know!

I have recently re-read my whole collection of Dick Francis novels. Most are very good, some terrific. 'Second Wind' however, missed the mark by a mile. I never became involved with the characters, and the plot simply didn't make much sense. A disappointment.

Usual stylish, fast moving Dick Frances mystery

This time, Dick Francis's hero is a meteorologist caught up in situations beyond his control. Francis is a master of the Everyman hero and this is no exception. Not one of his very best, but good enough indeed.

I have read a lot of Dick Francis novels, although before I started putting reviews on here. Most were entertaining, well crafted and at least moderately believable. In general they follow the same pattern, boy meets girl, gets beaten up, falls of a horse, has broken ribs and is nursed back to health by his latest paramour whilst uncovering some dastardly plot. All well and fine, the Holiday Inn or Mc Donald's of reading, easy going, light and comfortable.

This one I picked up from a box of junk in a friends garage and fear that it had been placed there with good reason.
This wasn't up to the normal standard, easy reading, entertaining yes but the plot was weak and confused, weapons grade uranium, mysterious tubercular diseases and an (admittedly interesting) splash of meteorology thrown in for good measure. There was never any real sense as to why or how our villains were able to operate their "business", or how indeed they were going to make a fortune from revising the means of pasteurization for that matter. A good book to read whilst in traction, entertaining enough to avoid the boredom but not sufficiently rewarding that you wouldn't be keen to leap from your bed as soon as recovery neared.

3 Stars

Second Wind by Dick Francis is an engrossing crime and investigation story that had me invested right from the beginning. With plenty of action, danger, mystery, suspense, tension, drama, and intrigue- this made for an interesting read.
->2023 Reading Challenge.
->Glennie's Collection
Dick Francis novels were a familiar fixture in our household when I was growing up, as both my parents loved his books. He was amongst the first ‘adult’ reads that I explored at the time, and over the years I have read everything he’s written. I remember every time my mother read one of his books, she'd tell me about him and how he'd gone from being an RAF pilot to being the Queen Mother's favourite jockey, before retiring to become a journalist/writer.
Since my mother passed away over a year ago, I have been making my way through her book collection, finally. I decided to make reading her entire collection a part of my reading challenge for the next couple of years (she has a HUGE collection), as well as a way to pay tribute to my mum, who was such a voracious reader..... Reading her collection of books has stirred up a lot of memories, mostly of our shared love of reading. I am forever grateful that she passed on her love of reading to me.

A fast paced page turner!

Love to read Dick Francis books. Always fast paced and edge of your seat storys. This page turner was hard to put down, and when I did put it down, I couldn't wait to get back to it!

Still good! Having not read it for a while.

A fun romp but tried to do a little bit too much. It was at its best when it was a cast away story.

This was a good story, but I would have enjoyed it much much more had at least one character been more likeable. I just could not get involved in the people even though the situations were frequently compelling. When I relate to the characters I engage emotionally in the story. That was missing here.