I always feel slightly embarrassed to say Dick Francis is my favourite author. Escapist rubbish, I'm sure some people will say. But that's to seriously underrate his work.

He (or was it his wife Mary???) was a real craftsman: a genius at describing characters (even minor ones) in two or three telling sentences. His plots are always logical and believable. I know I will always fall in love with the ethical and intelligent hero. It's been a while since I read any of his novels and based on this one, I think it's time I read them again (Dick Francis is one of the very few authors whose books I can read more than once).

So delicious, I almost scoffed the lot in one sitting.

The more there is to grab, the greediest the people. That quote summarises the story of this book. Malcom Pembroke is a multi billionaire. He was a shrewd businessman who traded in Gold. Buying low and always selling high. He was very wealthy. But with this much fortune, came great corruption. Greed, jealousy, and strife were some of the demons lurking in this family.

Moira, Malcoms 5th wife was dead. Murdered by an unknown assailant. Now, Malcoms life was hanging on the balance. Attempts had already been made on his life. He believed that his likely heirs were responsible. The motive: The family wanted him to stop squandering what they thought to be their inheritance. That is the the plot of this novel which I thought was very absorbing and interesting.

Intriguing, informative and interesting

Typical Dick Francis mystery with so many twists and turns. Tests the concentration but never ceases to create the desire to find out the answer to the mystery and of course ‘Whodunnit’

I thought I had read all the Dick Francis books. I'm so glad I was wrong. Lately, as I reread them, I naturally find them less than original, less fun to read. It's so nice to find one I didn't know existed and recapture that fun and esteem that comes from reading a book like Hot Money.

It's a typical Dick Francis novel. A mild-mannered protagonist who is forced into helping someone out of a jam inspired by a murder, usually involving a strange or estranged family and always involving horse racing. Nothing new to see here, except I really liked it. I guess the newness came from finding it in the first place.

The last lines are also typical, the main character has gone through an adventure and grown, usually spiritually and closer to a loved one, but ultimately he is the same person who started the novel.

“Did you notice I’d taken the golden dolphin and the amethyst tree and so on out of the wall and put them in the sitting room?” he asked casually.

“Yes, I did.”

“I sold the gold too.”

I glanced at him. He looked quizzically back.

“The price rose sharply this year, as I thought it would. I took the profit. There’s nothing in the wall now except spiders and dust.”

“Never mind.”

“I’m leaving the clause in the will, though.”

The family had been curious about his leaving me the piece of wire, and he’d refused to explain.

“I’ll buy more gold, and sell it. Buy and sell. Forward and backward. One of these days”— his blue eyes gleamed—“ you may win on the nod.”

Francis, Dick - Hot Money

[9/10]

‘What’s hot money?’ Malcolm demanded.
‘The bets made by people in the know. People with inside information.’

My money is on Dick Francis for the win with this thriller that mixes the horse-racing world that was so familiar to the author with a more unusual plot that tries to emulate an Agatha Christie murder mystery.
For several years now, I’ve been turning December into a comfort reads month, the one where I present myself with gifts of my favourite, feel-good authors. Dick Francis certainly qualifies here, alongside P G Wodehouse, Connie Willis, Sir Terry Pratchett and others.
After reading through most of his catalogue, I cannot deny that he is rather predictable, but also consistent in delivering the goods we fans expect from his stories: engaging characters, fluid prose and a good pacing.

Hot Money is one of his best runs. I always prefer the stories where the main character/amateur detective is a steeple-chase jockey. His name here is Ian Pembroke, one of the usual suspects for Dick Francis: a quiet, laid-back, ordinary man with a passion for horses and a steel core to his character. Although he is in his thirties, Ian lives alone after a falling-out with his rich father, working as a stable boy so he can afford to race in amateur steeplechase events. His well-organized and pleasing life is about to be ruined by family events: first, his father’s latest wife Moira is killed in the family mansion by unknown assailants, then his father contacts Ian with an urgent plea for help.

‘Assassins aren’t so frightfully easy to find, not for ordinary people. How would you set about it, for instance, if you wanted someone killed? Put an ad in The Times ?’

Malcolm Pembroke suspects somebody is trying to kill him and he wants Ian to stay by his side, to protect him and to find out what is going on. After witnessing a second attempt on his father’s life, Ian decides this is a family matter, which doesn’t much simplify the proceedings. After Malcolm’s five marriages, nine children, several in-laws and nieces and nephews, Ian has his work as an amateur detective cut out to pinpoint the guilty party.

Time I understood the whole lot of them, because perhaps in that way we might come to know who could and who couldn’t murder.
To search through character and history, not through alibis. To listen to what they said and didn’t say, to learn what they could control, and what they couldn’t.

The classical method of interviews, alibis and motive doesn’t work in this case. Malcolm amassed not only wives and children, but also a considerable wealth from speculations on the gold market. After Moira’s death, he started to reconsider his priorities, which now include spending considerable amounts of money on charities and on his new passion: horses.
His presumed heirs are incensed and suspect Ian of sabotaging them in the eyes of their father. They want their inheritance, and they want it now. Things are about to turn even uglier.

Bombs were for wars, for wicked schemes in aeroplanes, for bus stations in far places, for cold-hearted terrorists ... for other people. Bombs weren’t for a family house outside a Berkshire village, a house surrounded by quiet green fields, lived in by an ordinary family.
Except we weren’t an ordinary family.

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With a much larger cast of characters that the usual Dick Francis thriller, the Pembroke family tree at the start of the book is a lifesaver. My own journey was also helped along by the chapters that refer directly to Ian Pembroke passion for horses, with gripping descriptions of several races, interesting trivia about buying a thoroughbred and some globe-trotting adventures in Paris, Australia, Kentucky and California for the most prestigious events on the calendar. Malcolm Pembroke has surely found a most thrilling way to spend his fortune and to get to know his estranged son Ian.

‘What are you smiling at?’ Lucy demanded. ‘You can’t say you’ve made much of a success of your life so far, can you? If Malcolm leaves us all nothing, you’ll end up carrying horse-muck until you drop from senility.’
‘There are worse jobs,’ I said mildly.

The orderly bustle of stable life, the smells, the swear words, the earthy humour, the pride, the affection, the jealousies, the injustice, the dead disappointments, all the same the world over.

For all the fancy stories about the jet set and the horses, the meat of the story remains the gradual reveal of the skeletons hidden in the cupboards of the Pembroke scions. All of them expect their father to pay for their lives of luxury and to finance their pet projects. One of them is prepared to kill before the fortune is squandered away by Malcolm, no matter how many times their father told them he will be fair to all his children.

‘Entrenched belief is never altered by the facts.’

This is something we have all found out to our own pain in this year 2024, subject to propaganda and conspiracy theories from all sides.
Ian meets a real police investigator who is similarly baffled by the abundance of suspects in the case: ‘The pool of common knowledge in your family is infuriating.’ when the inquest points out to the childhood years at the Pembroke mansion. It appears the past holds the key not only to the question of how one of the family members knew how to make a bomb  they all witnessed the gardener blowing up stumps with dynamite sticks , but also to deeply entrenched resentments and envy, mostly coming from the ex-wives of Malcolm who indoctrinated their children against him.

And I’ve seen, you know, how the present has grown out of that past.

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I’ve said earlier that Francis is predictable. I can usually spot the main villain a mile away, because he is always the one who thinks he deserves the best of life and is prepared to do anything to get his own.

... the insignia of a natural bully: mean tightening of the mouth, jabbing forefinger, cold patronising stare down the nose, visible enjoyment of others’ discomfiture.

There is always a bully or two in a Dick Francis thriller, and he usually tries to torture the main character at the denouement of the investigation. The author has used this device so many times that even I was surprised that he can come up with something different from time to time. With so many Pembroke suspects to choose from, Francis has a field day of red herrings and demonstrates he can keep an ace up his sleeve when needed... while also going back to his tried and tested writer hooks:

Would a classic trap invitation work after so long an interval? Only one thing to do: try it and see.

This is one of the best Dick Francis books that I've read. I liked the suspense (as usual) but also the psychological look into a wealthy and largely dysfunctional family like the Pembrokes.

This is one of my favorite Fracis books, because of the financial aspect as well as the family drama taking place. I like the idea that old dogs can learn new tricks, and that adults can come to know their parents in a different light despite a rough past. The author certainly improved in his characterizations over the years.

HOT MONEY - Ex
Francis, Dick - 26th book

With his five ex-wives and the nine children between them, it's no great surprise that spectacularly wealthy gold trader Malcolm Pembroke should preside over a motley clan in constant conflict with one another.

But when violent death strikes the least likable of his former spouses, Malcolm himself feels threatened, and he calls on his most capable son, Ian, the family jockey. Ian's task: to protect his father from their nearest, if not always dearest, relatives—and to delve for the final, critical clue in the darkly buried Pembroke past, simmering with the greed, hate, and vengefulness that could motivate blood to strike against blood.

This is another of my favorites. Great protagonist and I loved the relationship between him and his father.

This was my first Dick Francis book and is still one of my favourites. Ian Pembroke is an amateur steeplechase jockey, estranged from his father when he objected to his fifth wife. The wife has just been murdered and Malcolm comes to Ian, telling him someone is trying to kill him too, and begging Ian to stay with him. They go to the horse auctions where Malcolm (who is incredibly wealthy) buys a two year old for two million pounds. As they are in the car park (dangerous places in Dick Francis' novels), a car very nearly hits Malcolm, but Ian manages to push him out of the way. Now Ian believes the threats on his father's life and moves him to a different hotel so they can't be found. But after some time living in hotel rooms, Malcolm longs for his big manor house and they return for a week. Then after a day at the races, they return and Ian doesn't feel comfortable - something is wrong. Again, they move to a hotel, and return the next day to find the house demolished - blown up with a bomb.

I found this story really fun to read, as Malcolm loves to spend money, though he refuses to give any more to his numerous children - they've all got trust funds. Could the murder attempts be a family member trying to killing their father in order to gain money from the will? Ian visits all the family members, who are nasty to him as he's their father's favourite, and makes his conclusion.

As I finish this, Dick Francis has pulled away from Philip Roth to third place in my Goodreads Most Read Author list – this is Francis’ 17th book that I have read. And I think I’ve found my favorite, so far at least. “Hot Money” doesn’t follow the standard recipe that I’ve noticed in most Francis’ stories – mashing up some aspect of horse racing with two other areas that he surely had to research, like movie production and computer viruses, and building a believable and driving mystery containing that combination. This was an odd one – there were a few paragraphs on the vernacular of gold investing, but mostly horse racing stood out here. This was the most “horsey” book of his I’ve read, touching on a jockey riding amateur steeplechases, trainers of different classes of horses, as well as a very rich man getting the horse ownership bug at a late age. Those wanting more horse industry in their story get it in this one.

But what really sets this off is Francis’ description of a family that is truly out of whack. The rich scion, mentioned above as the new horse owner, has had 5 wives and 9 children, and this begins with what appears to be a family member killing the current wife and attempting multiple times to kill the scion. Francis writes these characters extremely well – they are all quite different but understandable on reflection. Much of what makes the characters different is that while they are demanding an “early inheritance”, their reasoning and their circumstances are markedly different. And they have some shared history that comes into play – doesn’t every extended family have a shared experience with explosives? Francis mostly keeps the entire cast of characters in play as the possible bad guy until right near the end. An excellent performance.

In Hot Money, Dick Francis introduces us to a large and varied cast of characters. I think this is the largest ensemble he had ever used to that point (1987), and this may have been a deliberate exercise on his part. With many arts, the more characters you have to paint, or draw, or write about, or choreograph for, the more difficult the work becomes. Think about writing for a symphony versus writing for a string quartet.

Our hero this time is Ian Pembroke, son of third of the five wives of Malcolm Pembroke. There were four living wives, until, just before the action in Hot Money begins, the most recent wife, Moira, was murdered. Who killed Moira? Who is trying to kill Malcolm, and why? There are four living ex-wives, two of whom are truly vicious characters. Malcolm has eight living children, and five of them are married, so there are four daughters-in-law and one son-in-law. Ian, unmarried, no children, and on reasonable terms with his mother, Joyce, hasn't spoken to his father in three years.

Then, to start the book, Malcolm calls Ian and asks him to protect Malcolm and find out who killed Moira. In order to accomplish this grim and complicated task, Ian must get to know his half-brothers and half-sister. He really needs to learn their strengths and weaknesses, and what motivates them. In particular, what could motivate one of them to murder.

There are the usual racing scenes, not only in England but in France, California and Australia. (A return to the scene of In the Frame.) Unusually, Ian acquires no love interest of his own. He's too busy saving his family from disintegration.

What one has here is a series of psychological portraits of individuals and how they react to the stresses and strains of married life. There are spouses who are supportive, spouses who are oppressive, and spouses who are downright destructive. To solve their problems, Ian has to look at them with clear-eyed vision, and then he has to remove the scales from their eyes.

Fascinating stuff.

A fun read. Perfect light reading for the summer.

Surprisingly not much happened but it was still thoroughly enjoyable. Another reviewer said it was a bit like an Agatha Christie, which I thought described it well. One main character telling the story who focuses on each person singularly and their potential motives, eventually leading to the killer.

I gave it 3 stars because it was deeply sexist and male dominated which on was challenging to ignore.