We're introduced to Sid Halley - ex-successful jockey, with hand that was deformed in a horse accident (mangled when fell off horse, and onto jagged horse shoe).

the last 2 years, since he lost his career and his wife, have gone by in a fog... his father-in-law (retired military, and holds him in high regard) got him a job at an investigative agency... as a consultant... and as he starts to get out of his funk, he gets shot... and...

his father-in-law hooks him into looking into some wealthy people who are swindling a horse track, to buy it cheap, and to sell it for big bucks/developer...

and Sid, takes it on... and finds his feet and a new talent/career.

3.8

Bettie's Books

I love these books...

Dick Francis, his books from the first sentence you're hooked, well I am. They are so beautifully written with all the suspense necessary to STOP you putting it down.
You'd be forgiven if you think it's about horse racing. Yes, there's references to it but there's so MUCH more. I've read and given a few years in-between re-read them and they still grip me from the start. Very different from his son's stories. If you want start reading, try one, your too will thoroughly enjoy the experience.

This is a classic detective novel involving handicapped investigator Sid Halley. The story is neatly told, moving quickly to its plot points. The surprisingly business-oriented plot involves the sabotage and takeover of a sea-side race course. The bad guys are driven by greed, of course, but also by the desire to be cruel and create pain. The author deals with the issue of the courage of the handicapped to appear in polite society in a forthright and touching manner. The conclusion ties up all loose ends nicely, except for the disappearance of a piece of quartz which disappears early in the story, and foreshadows what a crook the guest truly is. Very mature in its depiction of criminal and sexual depravity. No wonder it remains popular decades after it was published.

I remember having read this particular novel before, but as with the other nostalgia re-reads I’ve been doing recently, I honestly didn’t remember a whole lot of the plot, which is tight and in places, intense. This is one I’d probably enjoy more on paper than in audio-form. It’s harder to skim in an audiobook, and there’s a section I needed to skim, and a second section I would have preferred to skim. I can skim on paper and still pick up the important bits I want, or at least get myself back if I realized there’s something I missed. And there were parts of the section I skimmed by skipping ahead in 15 second intervals that I think I would have liked to know.

This is the start of one of the very few series that Dick Francis wrote. This book focuses on ex-jockey Sid Halley who has been rather aimless for a couple years but starts a private investigation case. I think the author does a good job depicting the trauma of having a crippled hand. This book seems darker than some of the other Dick Francis books I have read. It was OK but I did not like it as well.

This was the first of the Sid Halley series and it was good to find out the beginning of his PI career. The plots of all the Dick Francis books are always good.

First of the Sid Halley series. Ex jockey with a mangled hand is working for an detective agency, tho doing nothing of importance. After he is recovering from being shot in the abdomen, his soon to be ex father in law askes him to look into some shady business dealings regarding a race course. A viscous and crooked land developer has been buying up shares of the race track and rigging accidents.
Sid gets to the bottom of things and almost loses his life.
The developer is sadistic and totally destroys Sid's mangled hand. He has no choice now but to get a prosthetic hand.
Sid will return photos of his crooked dealings to the land developer if he turns over all his shares in the race track.
Good start of the series.

N-am fost deloc pasionat de slujba mea până în ziua în care cineva m-a împuşcat şi era gata-gata s-o pierd, laolaltă cu viaţa. Dar pistolul de calibrul 38, care-mi ciuruise intestinele, m-a lăsat cu un foc în pântece şi la propriu şi la figurat. Pentru că altfel n-aş fi întâlnit-o niciodată pe Zanna Martin şi aş fi rămas şi acum prins în plasa de păianjen a bucuriilor trecute, de niciun folos nimănui şi cu atât mai puţin mie.

Acel glonţ a fost primul pas spre eliberare deşi, la vremea respectivă, n-aş fi crezut-o. L-am oprit pentru că îmi era indiferent. Indiferent deoarece eram plictisit.

M-am trezit treptat, în spital, într-o rezervă, pentru care aveam să primesc o notă foarte piperată câteva zile mai târziu. Înainte chiar de a deschide ochii, am început să regret că nu părăsisem lumea pentru totdeauna. Parcă aveam un rug de flăcări sub ombilic.

O conversaţie înverşunată, pe ton ridicat, se purta deasupra capului meu. Cu mintea înceţoşată - anestezicul dispersându-se în creierul meu asemeni pufului de păpădie în văzduhul verii -, lipsit de puteri, am încercat să dau un sens celor spuse.

— Nu poţi să-i administrezi ceva care să-l trezească mai repede?

— Nu.

— Nu putem face prea multe până nu ştim povestea lui, trebuie să ai în vedere asta. Sunt aproape şapte ore de când ai terminat operaţia. Sigur…

— Plus alte patru ore pe masă. Vreţi să sfârşiţi ceea ce glonțul a început?

— Doctore…

— Îmi pare rău, dar va trebui să aşteptaţi.

Este colegul meu, am gândit eu. Vor trebui să aştepte. Cine arde de nerăbdare să se întoarcă într-o lume plicticoasă? De ce să nu mergi la culcare pentru o lună şi apoi să iei lucrurile de la capăt, după ce ei au stins complet vâlvătaia? Am deschis ochii fără tragere de inimă.

Era noapte. Un glob electric strălucea în mijlocul tavanului. Calculam. Fusese dimineaţă când Jones-puştiul mă găsise sângerând pe linoleumul biroului şi se dusese la telefon, deci cam douăsprezece ore trecuseră de când îmi înfipseseră primul ac salvator în braţ. Mă întrebam dacă douăzeci şi patru de ore erau suficiente pentru ca un mic escroc ineficace şi lovit de panică să se facă nevăzut din ţară.

Doi poliţişti în stânga mea, unul în uniformă, altul în civil. Pe amândoi curgea transpiraţia, în cameră fiind teribil de cald. Doctorul stătea în picioare în dreapta mea ocupându-se cu un tub care ieşea dintr-o sticlă şi se oprea în cotul meu. Diverse alte tuburi răsăreau dezgustător din abdomenul meu, parţial acoperit cu un cearşaf subţire. Picătura şi drenajul, am gândit eu sardonic. Absolut încântător!

Listened to on Audible. I’ve enjoyed every Dick Francis novel so far, but I especially enjoyed this one and I really want to read/listen to more of the Sid Halley’s series! I love how Francis’ characters always grow and become stronger in his novels and this book had two characters that I was cheering for. He has a way of making them so real and I could not predict the outcome of the mystery to be solved.

Considering that the book opens with the protagonist in the hospital after being shot, it actually has a rather slow start to get to the mystery. If mystery is quite the right word. There are certainly questions to be answered, but it's more about preventing someone from doing something nefarious than a mystery, exactly.

Still, it's not either of those things that put me off. I'm just not that into protagonists who stick all their emotions in a box and spend most of their time acting as if nothing effects them at all. (Except for the occasional twinge of manly anger.) The villains were also kind of cartoonishly evil which didn't fit well with them supposedly being respectable people. I'm not saying you can't combine those things, but it's not an easy fit.

I also can't decide how I feel about the book's handling of disability. It was trying to have a positive message, but it felt kind of...shallow. As if the impacts of disability are purely psychological, and so can be kind of overcome the same way. But I don't know how someone with disabilities more akin to those of the book characters would feel about the presentation. (My own minor disabilities are vastly different.)

The final strike was that the villain commits a lot of crimes orders two bombings, attempts to sabotage a boiler to cause an explosion at a race track, attempts to injure/kill racers in another act of sabotage, does injure people in yet another, brutally tortures and attempts to kill the main character, and probably other things I've forgotten  but will only get a few years in prison? I don't care if the main character and his accountant worked out a way to completely end his current scheme. I don't like that this guy is going to be loose to do god knows what in a few years again. This is not a satisfying ending. It's like if a Bond villain got two years in prison at the end, instead of a horrible karmic death.