Even Money

So sad that this is the last novel from Dick Francis. I quite enjoyed this tale of the gambling world around horse racing. I learned something new about how it works. Great hero, as always - just a bit too stubborn for his own good, and able to rise to the occasion when things get really rough. In a plot change, the hero is married in this book and there is a side plot of how his wife and he are dealing with her mental illness. Wonder if Felix Francis will keep writing.

"Even Money," the third collaboration between Dick Francis and his son Felix in the last three years, is another in the long line of Dick Francis horse track mysteries, and it is a good one. Longtime fans of Dick Francis might react differently to "Even Money," of course, believing that it suffers in comparison to the author's earlier work. I, on the other hand, having only ever read one other Dick Francis novel, and that many years ago, experienced "Even Money" more as a standalone novel. And as such, I enjoyed it.

Ned Talbot is thirty-seven years old and has been a bookmaker all his life, having inherited the family business from his grandfather, Teddy Talbot. In fact, when Ned sets himself up to do business at various tracks, the show more board above his head still says "Trust Teddy Talbot" on it. With the help of Luca, a computer whiz who accepts and manages each day's bets, Ned makes a decent living for himself and Sophie, his mentally fragile wife. He may be doing quite well but Ned thinks often about how bookmakers are despised by most everyone in the racing world, even those who make their own livings from the services he and his fellow bookies provide.

Ascot is not one of Ned's favorite racetracks and, in fact, he seldom enjoys setting up shop there. But because his grandfather had considered participation at Ascot to be one of the firm's best marketing techniques, Ned and Luca are there hoping to make the best of things. What Ned does not bargain for is the stranger who approaches him at the end of the day to claim that he is Ned's father, a man Ned had thought dead for thirty-six years. Just one hour later, as Ned and Peter Talbot make their way to Ned's car, they are assaulted by a knife-wielding thug and Ned begins a frantic race of his own, one he has to win if he is to stay alive.

It is relatively common for bookies to be robbed of their day's earnings before they leave the track, but Ned senses that what happened to him and his father is no ordinary mugging. What he discovers in his father's rucksack (30,000 pounds in cash, counterfeit horse passports, an electronic device that reminds him of a television remote, and ten little devices each the size of a grain of rice) confirms for Ned that his father was specifically targeted by the man who attacked them. Now he wants to know why.

Even before the sudden appearance of his father, Ned has a lot going on in his world. Sophie is bipolar and her illness has gotten so bad that she has again been institutionalized for treatment; Luca is threatening to quit the firm unless Ned makes him a full partner; and the grandmother who raised him is suffering from dementia and living in a nursing home. Via these subplots, the reader comes to see Ned Talbot as a real human being who has managed to get himself in way over his head - and that is half the fun of "Even Money."

I particularly enjoyed the novel's details of how the world of bookmaking works, how odds are set, how bookies cover themselves with side bets of their own (a bit like insurance companies cover themselves by reinsuring their risk through other companies), and how they view themselves and those with whom they do business. I have not been a fan of this type of novel in the past but that little bit of "inside information" makes it more likely that I will seek out other Dick Francis novels now.

Rated at: 4.0 show less

On the first day of Royal Ascot, the world's most famous horse race, the crowd rejoices in a string of winning favorites. Ned Talbot has worked all his life as a bookmaker- taking over the family business from his grandfather- so he knows not to expect any sympathy from the punters as they count their winnings, and he his losses. He's seen the ups and downs before-but, as the big gambling conglomerates muscle in on small concerns like his, Ned wonders if it's worth it any more.
When a gray-haired man steps forward from the crowd claiming to be his father, Ned's life is thrown into far deeper turmoil. He'd been told since he was a baby that his parents had died in a car crash.
Barely an hour later, his newly found father is stabbed by an show more unknown assailant in the Ascot parking lot. Blood oozing from his abdomen, his father warns Ned to "be very careful." But of whom? Of what? Ned finds himself in a race to solve his father's riddle-a race where coming in second could cost him more than even money-it could cost him his life. . . . show less

Not a bad read, but sure made me nostalgic for the Dick Francis who used to reliably keep me on the edge of my seat with novels that were taut, suspenseful, and spare. Sadly, this plot doesn't really hang together, the main character is somewhat unsatisfying (one of the things that has always, for me, made Francis's thrillers so engrossing was the empathetic "everyman" nature of his heroes), and - most unforgiveable of all - we never get to see the baddies get their come-uppance. No disrespect to Felix, but he's not the talent his dad was ... though he may be able to make a career of sorts out of pale imitations such as this.

I didn't warm up to this audiobook mystery at first -- I don't know if it was the writing or the narration by Martin Jarvis. In the end, this was an enjoyable mystery but not as good as Dick Francis' earlier books. Perhaps Felix doesn't have as much storytelling skill as his father or perhaps this one was just not as appealing to me personally... For example, there was a section near the end that seemed quite unnecessary - the travelogue of Australia part - it came across as filler.

Hoowever, the best parts were classic Francis - the getting even with the bad guys con job was brilliant! It reminded me a bit of one of my favorite Francis mysteries, [b:High Stakes|8553|High Stakes|Dick show more Francis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309283355s/8553.jpg|675143]. show less

Not bad, not wonderful. A bookmaker hero in this one, but the villains are oddly unfocused - I think most of them end up being linked, but weakly. The stabber, John Smith, Paddy Murphy, the big bookmaker's muscle, etc - his wife's mental illness is more important than any (though probably not all) of them. And he's - not exactly an unreliable narrator - he tells the truth to the readers at all points - but he keeps discovering that he was systematically lied to all his life, so the truth-as-he-knows-it keeps changing. And so on, and so on. It feels unfocused in my memory already - I'll likely reread it, but it will never be a favorite.

The second to last book that Dick Francis co-authored with his son was Even Money. As always it features a bloke who has something to do with horse-racing (in this case he’s a bookmaker) who experiences some unexpected unrest in his life (here it is the appearance of the father he’d thought long dead followed closely by witnessing the man’s murder) which he has to resolve to his peril while dealing with day-to-day life’s tribulations (a wife with severe mental health issues and rough treatment by the ‘big boys’ of his business). I could probably have re-read any of Francis’ 41 earlier books and gotten roughly the same amount of enjoyment and comfort as I received from reading the new one but that’s kinda the point of show more reading Dick Francis. At least for me. While the details might change the basic formula doesn’t and when you need an engaging if not particularly surprising story which contains enough of a puzzle to keep you interested and characters you are going to enjoy watching overcome their problems (because they undoubtedly will) then Dick Francis is your man. As with most of his books, Even Money is well-written, containing enough detail about a new subject (bookmaking) to keep it interesting, and its characters are engaging. There’s even some humour which might be the influence of Francis’ son and co-author because it’s not been much of a feature of previous novels, and the depiction of someone with mental health problems and the impact this has on loved ones is very credible which shows off the good research, another feature of the Francis novels. show less