Without a library book on hand, I resorted to a book on my keepshelf - one of the Dick Francis books I inherited from my good neighbor Leya. It was a delight to re-enter the world of horse racing through the eyes of Tim Ekaterin, a young investment banker at a firm founded by his grandfather. When his boss has to take a medical leave, Tim is forced to make a decision about whether to extend a loan to a stud farmer who hopes to rebuild his farm by purchasing Sandcastle, who won outstandingly at Ascot last year. Tim tours the farm, as well as others related to the industry, and obtains a quick education from a stud broker about the finances involved (and so do we, "looking over his shoulder", as it were.) The danger occurs when the foals born to mares bred to Sandcastle are born with debilitating defects, which will lower the stud's value and ruin the farmer. Who stands to benefit from this disaster? Who else will die before Tim can figure it out? As always, Francis delivers.

This book took a long time to really get started and I was not really interested until near the end of it. It may have been the timing of when I read it, but I would like to try another Francis book in the future. Overall I recommend the book. I say power through the first year and a half and then enjoy the last half of the book.

I just re-read (probably for the fourth or fifth time) BANKER by Dick Francis and was struck again by what a terrific book it is. Tim Ekaterin is a merchant banker who approves a large loan to a stud farm to purchase a high-priced stallion. Of course, bad things happen and he discovers what they are and who perpetrated them. The book is set less in the horse world than in the world of British banking and yet I still loved it.

Tim is one of Francis' most intriguing characters: the grandson of the bank's founder, yet his family was destitute; madly in love with his boss's wife, yet refusing to act on it; genuinely passionate about his job, yet self-deprecating about his talents; fearless, yet a buttoned-up banker.

Francis also does an incredible job of making a story which stretches over three years into a compelling page turner. That's genius!

I really do not know why I liked this as well as I did, but I did. The ending was kind of to good to be true all of a sudden. but my twisted mind went what? and was kind of suspicious.This is the first I've read of this author. Will read another. Was supposed to be a suspenseful mystery, but wasn't really much of that. Somehow though I found it refreshing. could be just because it was British.

One of my favorite multiple re-reads by Dick Francis, both in print and audio. Tony Britton is one of my favorite readers.

Written in 1982, this was an excellent thriller. Tim Ekaterin is an investment banker in the firm begun by his grandfather. He was raised by parents more interested in partying than banking. After his father's death, his mother's gambling habit drove the family into bankruptcy. His uncle agrees to bail his mother out if Tim works for the bank.

Not expecting much more than to fulfill his agreement with his uncle, Tim finds that he has the talent to be an excellent merchant banker. He is happy learning under his mentor Gordon and being quietly in love with Gordon's wife.

When Gordon goes through a medication issue in his treatment for Parkinson's Disease, Tim takes over for him until he is ready to come back. During his time as head, he convinces his firm to lend money to a young cartoonist that several other banks have turned down. The cartoonist's quick and major success not only gives Tim confidence in his judgment but gives him the reputation as a lucky man.

An outing with the Chairman and Gordon and his wife Juliet to the horse races brings a new opportunity to Tim and the bank. Tim sees Sandcastle win a stunning victory and also meets and saves the life of a faith healer whose patients are horses.

When a trainer comes to Tim to ask for financing to purchase Sandcastle to put him to stud, Tim convinces the bank to come up with the eight million that are needed. Tim spends time at the breeding farm and meets the owner's young daughter. He becomes friends during his frequent visits.

When the owner calls some time later, he has a problem. It seems that Sandcastle's foals are showing a much higher than average number of birth defects. Sandcastle's problems as a stud threaten to not only bankrupt the trainer but cause a substantial loss for the bank too.

Tim has only a short period of time to figure out if the problem is with Sandcastle or if someone is manipulating things for their own purposes. And when the trainer's young daughter is murdered the stakes go even higher.

This was an excellent story. Tim is a wonderful main character who is both smart and honorable. The prose isn't flowery, but the emotional intensity is there. Simon Prebble did a wonderful job of bringing Tim Ekaterin to life.

I think this is an older book, but one I haven't read. Most of his books are "stand alone" except for the Sid Halley series. This one is about a young man working in a banking firm. He convinces his partners to loan a huge sum so that a man can buy a race horse to use for stud. Of course it does not all go smoothly. All of Francis' books have something about horse racing in them. Also the characters are well drawn and the dialog is great. You can't go wrong with Dick Francis.

Tim Ekaterin arranges the sale of the champion racehorse Sandcastle for millions of pounds. Learning of an apparent defect, he is plunged into a world of violence and murder.

Read 2014

Tim Ekaterin works at a merchant bank in England founded by his family. He is thought of by some of his colleagues as only being there because of his name. But when his boss becomes ill he has to take over the decision making about a 5,000,000 lb. loan to Oliver Knowles to purchase Sandcastle, a throughbred horse for breeding. After investigation he decides to grant the loan and then the trouble starts. The story is a little slow in the beginning but there is a lot to learn from the different elements in the novel about merchant banking, horse breeding, and when murder results from the element it took to accomplish it. Tim falls in love with his boss' wife but can do nothing about it and the love story continues throughout. After a slow start the book takes off and gathers speed in the plot which is interesting.

There is so much more to racing than the day of the horse race. There is health care, trades, favors, enormous amounts of money and quite often some shading dealings.

Tim Ekaterin is a young banker, in a family firm that must prove his worth as the road he came by to arrive there involved an alcoholic father and a mother with a gambling obsession that cost the family all that they had. Naturally there are some there that believe he will follow the road of his parents and take the bank with him in the process.

An opportunity arises for a large investment in a top racehorse that will be put to stud. The potential money is astounding by 1982 standards, the year of publication.

Many twist and turns with deceit and intrigue. Highly recommend.

Tim Ekaterin’s parents were rich... up to a point. Enjoying a privileged upbringing of comfort and ease, Tim’s memories included lavish vacations and going to the races. “I had been their only child and they’d given me a very good childhood, to the extent that when I thought of holidays it was of yachts on warms seas or Christmas in the Alps.” However, by the time Tim’s father passes away, he and his wife had lost millions of pounds through gambling. “In twenty-five years, it seemed, my mother had gambled away the best part of half a million pounds; all gone on horses, fast and slow.”

The logical choice for Tim, of course, was to join his grandfather’s prestigious banking firm... or was it?

Tim approves a loan of five million pounds to finance the purchase of the famous racing stallion, Sandcastle, for the purpose of breeding high-performing race horses (an unprecedented loan...who would risk such an amount on a horse?) But when the foals begin to appear with birth defects, it is apparent that someone is interfering and bent on sabotage.

This novel, like almost all of Dick Francis’ writing, *does* involve the world of horses and racing, although not exclusively. Tim will save one of the characters, a ‘faith-healer’ of sorts (of horses! is there such a thing?) from a knife attack, and later we find Tim risking his own safety to rescue a runaway horse. In between, he navigates the always- volatile -and -unpredictable world of finance and banking, stumbles upon evidence in a murder of a popular veterinarian, and saves a stud farm from almost certain failure.

The author brings home to the reader with fresh, illuminating insight, the undeniable tragedy that murder brings: “I’d thought of her young life once as being a clear stretch of sand waiting for footprints, and now there would be none, now only a blank, chopping end to all she could have been and done, to all the bright love she had scattered around her.”

"Banker" is not a novel easily categorized. Is it a murder mystery? Partly. Banker is also a novel about the world of finance, horse-racing and breeding (not too explicit thankfully!), and includes villains, heroes, and plain, everyday folk just hoping to 'make it' in their world.

The author is not only talented at writing suspenseful mysteries, he is also good at creating believable characters. "Banker" is both fast-paced and intriguing and I was rooting all the way for Tim’s success.