Hands Down

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There are all too many naive and clueless gents (they *are* all guys) in both groups who either are in financial straits or have been indecorous with questionable female acquaintances. It is almost not worth it to continue reading him, but I read all of his father’s books and all of his, despite their flaws. Released 8th Nov 2022 by Crooked Lane Books, it's 304 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. My thanks to the publisher Crooked Lane and to NetGalley for giving me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

Set against the backdrop of horse racing this one has Sid with a new arm to replace the prosthetic one.

He managed to get one name but it was someone he hadn’t heard of, anyone who was involved was reluctant to talk through fear of what would happen. What racing did show up was dispiritedly about the intricacies of betting, not the excitement and pride of the sport.

The drips and drops of details, even entire plots, that had precipitated into my brain would have splished and splashed into even smaller drops to be carried along with the churning river of drips from the thrilling (or not) pages of the hundreds of whodunnits I have read, mixing up the characters, settings, and plots until I wouldn’t be able to distinguish one from the other, or sometimes even forgetting that I had ever read it! Suffice it to say the story held me captive for a few good hours - well written with plenty of action. The first three were written by Dick Francis, but after a long life and very prolific writing career, he rode off into the sunset. Felix Francis studied Physics and Electronics at London University and then spent seventeen years teaching Advanced-Level Physics. I understand I can change my preference through my account settings or unsubscribe directly from any marketing communications at any time.What Sid discovers is that it is one agent in particular responsible for the fraud, and he brings in Chico Barnes to help after he had been threatened. There were several disparate plot threads and they crossed and intertwined and were sometimes difficult to keep track of. An ex jockey friend Gary Bremner contacts Sid and begs him to drive to his stables as he feels his life is in danger, but Sid tells him he can’t that if he needs him he should drive to him. Sid Halley, former champion jockey who lost a hand to a terrible fall in a race and subsequent additional injury, now has an astonishing real live, and live is the operative adjective, transplanted left hand, which he has to mind carefully but which seems to be a growing cause of estrangement for his wife.