Hands Down

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But when Marina expresses discontent in their marriage and takes Saskia to visit her parents because her father is dying, Sid wonders if she'll ever come back. The writing is smoother, but there is a lot that is a bit off putting, which adds up to "I might take it off the shelf at the library if it were right in front of me, but I might not" and I certainly am not seeking them out. Besides spending time with Sid, Chico is back, too, acting as his bodyguard and so is his ex-father-in-law Charles. This follows Jockey turned PI, Sid Halley who is pulled into danger when a friend asks for his help.

Hands Down is the 6th mystery featuring Sid Halley, written by Felix Francis around characters originated by his late father, Dick Francis.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.

This is one of the better crime stories by Felix Francis using his late father's characters, particularly Sid Halley and Chico Barnes. Because the details of the plot would have had more time to leak out of context from my constantly replenished brain bucket of memories. Sid Halley is asked by an former jockey/now trainer to help him stop a fraud perpetrated by jockeys' agents. However, the very next morning, the friend’s stable yard is torched, horses killed, and then the friend is found dead.There were several disparate plot threads and they crossed and intertwined and were sometimes difficult to keep track of.

I remember reading him of old, pinching my mums old Dick Francis paperbacks and tucking myself away somewhere to read them. As it turns out, he should have been more fired up; the next day, the guy's stable and a few horses go up in flames - and then, not long after he meets with Sid to explain what's going on, the man himself is found hanged. Since my mother passed away over a year ago, I have been making my way through her book collection, finally. Consortia of agents have muscled into the selection of jockeys for races, and they demand fees from the jockeys and the trainers at stables.Nevertheless, I had to get closure about Sid and his daunting challenges, especially if and how he would hold up as his once fit and lithe jockey body ages, his precarious mental health teeters, and his personal relationships are threatened—all because of his propensity toward heavy risk-taking. Can Sid get to the bottom of what’s going on before he too becomes a victim, while, at the same time, saving his marriage? This was an engaging read, full of suspense, fast paced, gripping, looking at the underbelly of the racing world, but how are these masterminds controlling things without being caught?