Risk

Rating:
Summary: Accountant to the rescue
Review: Dick Francis brings in a different kind of hero, an accountant!

The story is very enjoyable. This novel differs from some of his others in that the hero actually has a sex life.

While, I would highly recommend this book, Francis does throw out a number of easy clues to figure out the true villian in the story.

Rating:
Summary: Accountant to the rescue
Review: Dick Francis brings in a different kind of hero, an accountant!

The story is very enjoyable. This novel differs from some of his others in that the hero actually has a sex life.

While, I would highly recommend this book, Francis does throw out a number of easy clues to figure out the true villian in the story.

Rating:
Summary: An auditor as a hero, accountants everywhere will cheer
Review: Dick Francis has a winning formula: he writes books about a young man of around 30, in a career most people might think is boring, but which turns out to be exciting. His hero is usually taken for granted and under-appreciated by his family, and under-employed, but in the course of the book proves he is far smarter, cleverer, and more observant than anyone supposed. Usually, there's a highly intelligent middle-aged career woman who recognizes his worth and helps him along. It's a formula, but the details that Francis provides makes it work every time.

In this case, our hero is an accountant, an auditor. Many people would start to snore at the thought that auditing could be an exciting job; as a former auditor myself, who has since traded it in for the relative calm of a desk job, I was pleased to see him show how varied and interesting the job can be. Auditors have to know a great deal about a variety of industries, do a lot of travelling, and have highly analytical minds used to investigating small details and discrepancies that most people would not notice. (There might be a bit of bias on my part, of course.) All this means that an auditor winds up making a good investigator of mysteries, as well.

Along with the details of Roland's regular job, and the details of horse-racing that are in every book, we also happen to find out a great deal about yacht-building. Such details are all through Francis's books; he seems to know about every possible job, and must collect details as much as most people collect lint. I always enjoy learning these details!

In this particular book, we have some ambiguous people who turn out not to be bad guys, the person captaining the yacht that Roland first is stored on when kidnapped. Then, the bad guy turns out to be a total surprise, someone we don't suspect at all till the end is revealed. Nonetheless, once the details are pointed out, one goes "Of course!"

Rating:
Summary: Clever, but slow at times
Review: Dick Francis writes with authority, but his plot tended to drag at times. Twists near the end were very good. Francis is a masterful manager of plot, although how exciting can a main character who is an accountant be? Worth reading but ultimately forgettable

Rating:
Summary: Clever, but slow at times
Review: Dick Francis writes with authority, but his plot tended to drag at times. Twists near the end were very good. Francis is a masterful manager of plot, although how exciting can a main character who is an accountant be? Worth reading but ultimately forgettable

Rating:
Summary: A Quick, Fun Read
Review: Francis does not stray from his famous mystery formula in Risk: an easy-going unmarried professional man (usually an amateur or ex-jockey) of scrupulous moral character unwittingly steps into the criminal plots of a client or acquaintance, and he must go to great lengths risking life, limb, and reputation in order to set things right again. He will fall in love with a beautiful and almost unattainable woman, he will get beaten up several times, and he will face a moral dilemma when a friend or family member is implicated in the criminal plot.

In the hands of a less capable writer this sort of formula could (and often does) produce the most unremarkable sort of mystery fiction, but Francis writes refreshingly clear prose and creates intriguing characters whose solid personalities shine through their somewhat ordinary personal lives.

As in his other novels Francis uses the story to explore the day to day activities of the profession practiced by the protagonist (such as politician, photographer, jockey, sommelier, jeweler, etc.). This novel follows an accountant and, unlike many of the other professions he explores, Francis fails to make accounting exciting or even interesting. (To his credit it is probably impossible to make corporate accounting interesting.) The kidnapping chapters in Risk, however, are perhaps the most exciting scenes that Francis has written.

Overall Risk is the typical Francis mystery thriller; a fast-paced, well written mystery sans any graphic sex or gross-out violence. Not on the level with Hammett, Christie, Sayers, etc., but a nice read nonetheless. I give it a B-.


Rating:
Summary: Interesting, slight change of formula here
Review: In many ways this is a quintessential Francis novel, with a fairly normal, likeable hero put into a situation where he is subjected to physical and mental challenges. The plot here is pretty good, although somewhat far fetched. However, this novel varies from the typical successful Francis formuala by having a sexual interlude between the hero and a female supporting character quite early on in the story. This is unusual, since Francis' characters are typcially fairly chaste, but this has the addes uniqueness of having the supporting female character be an older woman who wants to experience sex and chooses the hero, barely recovered from a dangerous brush with criminal types, as her man. This is diverting mostly because it seems to me that it is so different from the norm! I was quite taken aback by this!

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, slight change of formula here
Review: In many ways this is a quintessential Francis novel, with a fairly normal, likeable hero put into a situation where he is subjected to physical and mental challenges. The plot here is pretty good, although somewhat far fetched. However, this novel varies from the typical successful Francis formuala by having a sexual interlude between the hero and a female supporting character quite early on in the story. This is unusual, since Francis' characters are typcially fairly chaste, but this has the addes uniqueness of having the supporting female character be an older woman who wants to experience sex and chooses the hero, barely recovered from a dangerous brush with criminal types, as her man. This is diverting mostly because it seems to me that it is so different from the norm! I was quite taken aback by this!

Rating:
Summary: Wildly imaginative, and wildly implausible!!
Review: Roland Britten, amateur jockey and professional accountant, wakes up groggily, finds himself bound and tied, aboard what he later finds out to be a ocean going racing yacht in the Med. His last memory was winning, agains the odds, the Cheltenham Gold Cup after which he was kidnapped. This is his first of two abductions, and he has to find out why. Seemingly unimportant anecdotes about accountancy turn out to be critical. The tale sprints along, twisting and turning as it goes. It is a thumping good read, however possibly the least plausible of all DF's books, with some scenes absolutely outside the readers credibility - but this is Dick Francis, do we care???