|
|
Flying Fish Bookstore
|
|
|
Dick Francis
October 31, 1920 -
Former steeplechase jockey Dick Francis specializes in intriguing and suspenseful mysteries set against a racing backdrop. My fondness for Francis' novels does not stem solely from my own love of horses, however, but rather from his ability to develop engaging characters and to build suspense in believable situations. Invariably, as tensions build, the last quarter of each Francis cliffhanger is nearly impossible to put down. With the exception of his three books starring ex-jockey Sid Halley and the two featuring jockey-detective Kit Fielding, each of his works features a different protagonist. Therefore, the books can be read in any order. However, it is a pleasure to see the author's ability and style develop by reading his books chronologically, as I have listed them here.
In addition to receiving numerous awards for his books, Dick Francis received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth in 1983 and was elected a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master in 1996.
|
|
Sid Halley
Kit Fielding
Other Novels
Short Stories
|
|
|
|
Sid Halley
|
Odds Against
by Dick Francis / Paperback, Out of Print (first published 1965)
|
Top
|
After a fall from a racehorse that permanently crippled a hand, Sid Halley joined a detective agency. But it wasn't until some two-bit hoodlum drilled a slug into his side that he was sent out on a case of his own. That was where he met Zanna Margin, a woman who just might make life worth living again. But it was even money that he'd be killed before she had the chance.
|
|
Paperback (Out of print)
-
Audio Cassette
-
Audio Cassette (abridged)
|
|
|
|
Whip Hand
by Dick Francis / Paperback / May 1999 (first published 1979)
|
Top
|
Ex-jockey and private investigator Sid Halley is approached by the wife of an elite racehorse trainer, begging his help in figuring out why her husband's most promising horses have been performing so poorly. At first Halley thinks she's overreacting and the losing streak is just dumb luck. But now he's beginning to think it's something far more dangerous.
|
|
Paperback
-
Audio Cassette
-
Audio Cassette (abridged)
|
|
|
|
Come to Grief
by Dick Francis / Paperback / October 1996 (first published 1995)
|
Top
|
Having exposed an adored racing figure as a monster, Sid must testify at the man's trial. But the morning of his appearance, a tragic suicide shatters the proceedings and jars Halley's conscience. Plagued by regret and the suspicion that there's more to the death than has yet come to light, he is catapulted into days of hard, rational detection, heart-searching torments, and the gravest of perils.
|
|
Paperback
-
3-Title Hardcover
-
Audio Cassette (abridged)
-
Large Print
|
|
Kit Fielding
|
Break In
by Dick Francis / Paperback (out of print) (first published 1985)
|
Top
|
Family ties mean trouble, and when steeplechase jockey Kit Fielding comes to aid his twin sister and her husband Bobby, even death threatens. A vicious newspaper campaign jeopardizes Bobby's career as a racehorse trainer. Kit tries to find out who is behind it all, but there are powerful people who think Kit should mind his own business.
|
|
Paperback (out of print)
-
Audio Cassette
-
Audio Cassette (abridged)
|
|
|
|
Bolt
by Dick Francis / Paperback / April 1988 (first published 1986)
|
Top
|
It is bad enough that Kit Fielding is the tallest jockey in racing; he has to be the most humane, as well. Now he is risking his life to stop the slaughter of horses, shot with a weapon called--with the cruelest irony--"a humane killer." While involved in the investigation, he loses the woman he loves to an aristocrat and is menaced by an aspiring arms merchant.
|
|
Paperback
-
Audio Cassette
-
Audio Cassette (abridged)
|
|
Other Novels
|
|
|
Nerve
by Dick Francis / Paperback / September 1998 (first published 1964)
|
Top
|
Nerve is the story of a struggling young jockey--a misfit in a family of accomplished musicians--who discovers that his troubling losing streak is caused not by a lack of skill or confidence, but by something far more sinister.
|
|
Paperback
-
3-Title Paperback (out of print)
|
|
|
|
Reflex
by Dick Francis / Paperback / August 1990 (first published 1964)
|
Top
|
Philip Nore is no ordinary jockey. So naturally when Nore suspects that a track photographer's fatal accident is really murder, he sets out to discover the truth--and trap the killer.
|
|
Paperback
-
Audio Cassette
|
|
|
|
For Kicks
by Dick Francis / Paperback / January 1990 (first published 1965)
|
Top
|
Daniel Roke didn't want to leave his Australian stud farm to help look into an English horse-doping scandal. But there he was in England, taking over investigative duties vacated by a racing journalist who had died in a suspicious auto accident. And soon enough, Daniel learned that men who would give drugs to horses would do much worse to human beings.
|
|
Paperback
-
3-Title Paperback (out of print)
-
Audio Cassette
|
|
|
|
Flying Finish
by Dick Francis / Paperback / August 1999 (first published 1966)
|
Top
|
Henry Grey had a bad disposition. Or so his sister, his co-workers, and just about everyone else said. But Henry knew a new job was all he needed. His present career as an office worker and part-time amateur jockey would never do. So he took a new job--air transport of racehorses--which would let him see the world, maybe change his luck. His luck changed all right--when he found there was something more than horseflesh in the cargo hold.
|
|
Paperback
-
Audio Cassette
|
|
|
|
Blood Sport
by Dick Francis / Paperback / February 1990 (first published 1967)
|
Top
|
A stallion has vanished into the Blue Grass of Kentucky, and a young man and a girl spend a dangerous afternoon on the Thames. From these distant but related beginnings, Gene Hawkins, investigator by trade, finds himself trailing blood-horses over half America, while he in turn becomes the prey and the sport changes with a vengeance.
|
|
Paperback
-
Video
-
3-Title Video
-
Audio Cassette
|
|
|
|
Forfeit
by Dick Francis / Paperback / February 1999 (first published 1968)
|
Top
|
James Tyrone, a racing reporter for a London scandal sheet, suspects foul play when a fellow writer, who had a penchant for drink--but was always an honest sort--dies in an "accidental" fall. Tyrone finds clues to his death in some suspicious columns touting some can't-lose horses--who mysteriously failed to show up on race day.
|
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
Enquiry
by Dick Francis / Paperback / March 1989 (first published 1969)
|
Top
|
Jockey Kelly Hughes and trainer Dexter Cranfield had been barred from racing--for throwing a race for personal profit. It was a vicious frame-up and, worse, they had nowhere to turn to clear their names. Still, Hughes refused to take the phony verdict lying down--even though his personal enquiry might have him lying down permanently.
|
|
Paperback
-
Audio Cassette
|
|
|
|
Rat Race
by Dick Francis / Paperback / April 1993 (first published 1970)
|
Top
|
Matt Shore is a substitute pilot assigned to fly four racing buffs to the track. They're nervous, but Matt's not. That is, until he manages an emergency landing minutes before the plane explodes. Matt doesn't think anything else can possibly go wrong, but then he finds himself caught up in a rat race of danger that puts him on the wrong side of the odds.
|
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
Bonecrack
by Dick Francis / Paperback / April 1993 (first published 1971)
|
Top
|
In charge of his father's stables after a grisly accident lands the old man in the hospital, Neil Griffon finds himself brutally assaulted and abducted. The price for his freedom will mean the betrayal and deception of those who trust Griffon most. But he has no choice. A crime czar has made an ultimatum---that his own eighteen-year-old son be hired by Griffon's stables to ride its superstar horse in the Derby, and the young man must be trained to win, or else.
|
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
Smokescreen
by Dick Francis / Paperback / April 1993 (first published 1972)
|
Top
|
Movie star Edward Lincoln plays detectives on the big screen, but when his godmother asks him to investigate the mysterious failures of her racehorses in South Africa, he's out of his depth. Soon enough, he's plunged into a plot of gold, greed and gilded lives that forces him to uncover a killer and give a bravura performance he'll never repeat.
|
|
Paperback
-
Audio Cassette
|
|
|
|
Slay Ride
by Dick Francis / Paperback / November 1989 (first published 1973)
|
Top
|
British investigator David Cleveland has come to Oslo to investigate a champion jockey's disappearance right before the National, a race he was certain to win. But he's almost drowned in a fjord for his troubles. David knows accident and coincidence couldn't begin to explain this little mishap or the string of deaths that he would find was meant to include his own.
|
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
Knockdown
by Dick Francis / Paperback / April 1993 (first published 1974)
|
Top
|
For a generous commission, ex-prize-winning jockey Jonah Dereham agrees to bid on a special horse for a wealthy American lady. Unfortunately for him, the crunch on his skull after the auction is not the last. There's more in store until he manages to figure out the real high-stakes game being played.
|
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
High Stakes
by Dick Francis / Paperback / April 1993 (first published 1975)
|
Top
|
Steven Scott is relatively new to horse racing, but under the inspired guidance of a great trainer, he wins again and again. Yet just when he is winning at both women and horses, he discovers deceit in his own stables, a discovery that soon brings him a threat of death.
|
|
Paperback
-
Audio Cassette
|
|
|
|
In the Frame
by Dick Francis / Paperback / April 1993 (first published 1976)
|
Top
|
Charles Todd, an English artist well-known for his paintings of horses, embarks on his own investigation when his cousin Donald's home is burglarized and wife murdered. Todd uncovers an ingenious scheme involving theft, forgery and murder.
|
|
Paperback
-
Video
-
Audio Cassette (abridged)
|
|
|
|
Risk
by Dick Francis / Paperback / January 1994 (first published 1977)
|
Top
|
Roland Britten, accountant and champion steeplechase jockey, wakes in darkness with his hands tied. He has no idea where he is or what is happening and still he manages an escape -- until he is recaptured and the deadly cat and mouse game proceeds.
|
|
Paperback
-
Audio Cassette
|
|
|
|
Trial Run
by Dick Francis / Hardback (out of print) (first published 1978)
|
Top
|
Randall Drew, an expert steeplechase rider unable to continue his competition riding because of his need to wear glasses, is sent to Moscow by a member of the Royal Family to ensure that, in spite of possible troubles looming there, another member of the Royal Family will be able to ride in the Moscow Olympics. Randall is reluctant to got but does so anyway and is quickly exposed to some most unusual dangers in another action-packed Dick Francis adventure.
|
|
Hardback
|
|
|
|
Dead Man's Ransom
by Dick Francis / Paperback / March 1990 (first published 1981)
|
Top
|
Young physicist Jonathan Derry is given some musical tapes by a friend. But the tapes are really an elaborate, computerized horse-betting system that can make the owner a rich man--or a dead one.
|
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
Banker
by Dick Francis / Paperback / November 1989 (first published 1982)
|
Top
|
When young investment banker Tim Ekaterin becomes involved in the cutthroat world of thoroughbred racing, he finds his life in business blown to smithereens. The multimillion dollar loan he arranged to finance the purchase of a champion racehorse is threatened by an apparent defect in the horse. As Tim desperately searches for an answer, he falls headlong into violence and murder.
|
|
Paperback
-
Paperback
-
Audio Cassette
|
|
|
|
The Danger
by Dick Francis / Paperback / April 1989 (first published 1983)
|
Top
|
Andrew Douglas is a private kidnapping consultant hired by the wealthy, distraught father of a beautiful young jockey whose kidnapping shakes the racing world from Italy to England to the U.S.A.
|
|
Paperback
-
Audio Cassette
-
Audio Cassette (abridged)
|
|
|
|
Proof
by Dick Francis / Paperback / July 1997 (first published 1984)
|
Top
|
A young wine merchant's exposure of a liquor scam sparks a brutal murder and spreads corruption in the liquor industry into the world of thoroughbred horse racing.
|
|
Paperback
-
Audio Cassette
|
|
|
|
Hot Money
by Dick Francis / Paperback / September 1991 (first published 1987)
|
Top
|
Wealthy gold trader Malcolm Pembroke has five ex-wives and nine children between them, all fighting among themselves. But when violent death strikes the least likeable of his former spouses, Malcolm himself feels threatened, and he calls on his most capable son, Ian, a jockey, to protect him, and Ian comes up with the critical clue in the dark Pembroke past of greed, hate, lust and revenge.
|
|
Paperback
-
Hardcover
-
Audio Cassette
-
Audio Cassette (abridged)
|
|
|
|
The Edge
by Dick Francis / Paperback / March 1990 (first published 1988)
|
Top
|
The Great Transcontinental Mystery Race is a glittering rail junket that promised not only the opportunity to race a thoroughbred on some of the world's great courses, but also an intriguing mystery to be enacted on board, which passengers will be invited to solve. But included on the guest list is Julius Apollo Filmer, justifiably reputed to be the most ruthless operator in the racing underworld, and he's planning a strange plot of his own. For Tor Kelsey, undercover security agent for the British Jockey Club, a scenario of imaginary mayhem is about to explode into a nightmare of real and bloody murder.
|
|
Paperback
-
Audio Cassette
-
Audio Cassette (abridged)
-
Large Print
|
|
|
|
Straight
by Dick Francis / Paperback / February 1994 (first published 1989)
|
Top
|
As Derek Franklin, an injured steeplechase jockey, nears the end of his career, his older brother, Greville, is killed and he inherits all the confusion and danger that lay hidden in his brother's life. With peril everywhere, Derek's only hope is to identify the enemy. And he must call on all his stamina and endurance to make the final, straight run in his brother's life--without losing his own.
|
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
Longshot
by Dick Francis / Paperback / February 1994 (first published 1990)
|
Top
|
Hired to write the biography of a famous racehorse trainer, travel writer John Kendall soon finds himself racing to solve a murder before the killer catches up with him. His continued survival, it seems, would be considered a longshot.
|
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
Comeback
by Dick Francis / Paperback / February 1994 (first published 1991)
|
Top
|
When globe-hopping British First Secretary Peter Darwin returns to his childhood home for a visit, he is sorry. Waiting for him are long-hidden memories, a string of racehorse deaths and homicide involving a veterinary practice. As Darwin begins to realize that the key to all of it involves his own past, he wishes he'd never come back, because he might never leave again--alive.
|
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
Driving Force
by Dick Francis / Paperback / February 1994 (first published 1992)
|
Top
|
Transporting racehorses to the course is big business for ex-jockey Freddie Croft. But when one of his drivers breaks a cardinal rule and picks up a hitchhiker, the results are fatal...for the hitchhiker. Freddie knows that a corpse is bad for business, especially when the trail leads to corpse number two--and to strange nighttime stalkers and unseen conspirators who are weaving a web of deceit and danger that Freddie might never escape.
|
|
Paperback
-
Audio Cassette
-
Large Print
|
|
|
|
|
|
Wild Horses
by Dick Francis / Paperback / October 1995 (first published 1994)
|
Top
|
When a film director hear's a friend's deathbed confession about an unsolved crime that rocked the racing world nearly 30 years before, he is compelled to pick up the thread of the unfinished tale and follow it through to its perilous end.
|
|
Paperback
-
3-Title Paperback
-
Audio Cassette (abridged)
-
Large Print
|
|
|
|
To the Hilt
by Dick Francis / Paperback / October 1996 (first published 1996)
|
Top
|
With a fervor for the bagpipes and a talent for painting, 29-year-old Alexander Kinloch is not what you'd expect as the fourth son of a Scottish earl. When his ailing stepfather seeks his help reviving his bankrupt brewery, Alexander begrudgingly leaves his secluded highland cabin and enters a two-mile steeplechase. Alexander's life is threatened by someone who thinks he knows where the precious sword of Bonnie Prince Charlie is hidden.
|
|
Paperback
-
Hardcover
-
Audio Cassette
-
Audio Cassette (abridged)
-
Large Print
|
|
|
|
10 Lb. Penalty
by Dick Francis / Paperback / October 1998 (first published 1997)
|
Top
|
Youthful jockey Ben Juliard is expelled from Vivian Durridge's stables for a false accusation of glue sniffing the source of which, Ben discovers, is his own father, who needs his son by his side for a year of campaigning for Parliament. Complications arise in the form of dangerous political intrigues and dangerous villains.
|
|
Paperback
-
Hardcover
-
Audio Cassette (abridged)
-
Large Print
|
|
Short Stories
Mysteries |
Computers |
Miscellaneous |
Movies |
Friends' Favs |
Nature |
Hiking |
Humor |
Bookstore
For more information, email Karen Fish
Flying Fish Creations
Northridge, California
(800) 484-2669 x7061
© 1999 by Flying Fish Creations
Logo design by Sherridan M. Smith
Webmaster
Updated May 10, 2000