Not one of his better ones. Very predictable story about a relative of his fiancé's attempt to force her uncle to sign a business document (he co-owns the business) so the uncle may start making guns out of plastic.

A cracking good story by Dick Francis. Suspense, romance, betrayal - all the right ingredients.

A nice mystery. 2nd book in a 2 book series and it seemed to wrap up well.

Good story, great pacing. Good combination of Kit's personal life and an absorbing mystery. Well, Kit trying to resolve a difficult situation.

Doing what needs to be done and getting others to help clear-eyed and straight. I just love how Francis writes his protagonists. Kit Fielding is one of my favs.

Kit Fielding #2 - Kit's patron, Princess Casilia is upset - her husband's (Roland Brescou) business partner (Henri Nanterre) is threatening to expand his business to plastic guns, and insists that M. Brescou sign the papers or else. Kit tells them to hold their ground, but now the princess's best horses are being killed with a humane "bolt". Danielle, the princess' niece and Kit's finance, is chased after work one evening through some dark London streets after two of her car tires are flattened, and another of the princess's relatives (Prince Litsi) falls from a high viewing platform under construction at a race track, and would have been killed if not for Kit's quick actions to the crowd to drop their coats below him. Kit has to come up with a plan to outwit Henri Nanterre but learns too late that there is another person that wants him dead.

This book was not as exciting as some others, lots of talking, thinking and planning - only average.

Well, I accidentally listened to the sequel before I listened to the first book, but it ended up being okay as they could both be stand alone novels. Great mystery!

I loved reading Dick Francis books years ago!! It is so fun to revisit one of his books again!! A good plot that kept me engaged, well written and very interesting story line about the horse racing world and manipulation by the “bad guy”!! Kit is a great character with an interesting look into the life of the horse racing jockey.

There are two novels featuring the steeplechase jockey Christmas (Kit) Fielding in the works of Dick Francis. Break In and Bolt are both excellent suspense novels, and Bolt does particularly well at pulling the main character into a different situation, with different challenges. At the core of both novels is the centuries-old Fielding-Allardeck feud.

Bolt is a nice example of the bait-and-switch plot. Throughout the book the ostensible villain is Henri Nanterre, a French manufacturer who wants to take his firm into manufacturing guns. Roland de Brescou, co-owner of the firm, refuses as a matter of honor. Nanterre makes threats and attempts acts of violence.

Princess Casilia, who owns many of the horses Fielding rides, brings Kit into the situation, and he, naturally finds a way to neutralize Nanterre. Meanwhile, Kit's romance with Danielle, the princess's niece, has hid a rocky patch, and he is trying to wait her out. In the last chapter, we suddenly find that Nanterre couldn't have committed some of the outrages Kit and his friends were blaming on him, and the novel takes a sudden turn.

Well done!

2,5

Nice characterisation, fast easy read.

It's hard to go wrong with a Dick Francis novel. He writes about a world he knows well (and yes, I do know that he is dead, but as his books are still in print and every bit as good now as they were when he wrote them, I will use the present tense.) The British horse-racing world is his oyster, and he presents it to us on a platter, invited in by an engaging character who brings us into his world with consummate skill.
I have often marveled at how much information Francis manages to give us in the first two or three pages of a book, without ever seeming overly descriptive, or even descriptive at all! Francis is a master of words, surprisingly educated and erudite, all the while producing a thrilling, chilling novel of suspense and mystery set in a place we feel we have come to know as he does by the end of the book. Thanks for another well-told story - one worth rereading, as I did with this one, and it will go right back on my shelf so that I can read it again on some future day!