Customer Reviews

Banker

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Dick Francis is a formulaic writer, which is to say that one has a pretty good idea of the shape of the novel before one even cracks open the cover. While this would be a death knell for longevity for many, it hasn't been for Francis. This arises from the fact that his characters are so memorable and the milieu in which he casts his tales so rich and well defined that we totally forget that some of the plot mechanisms feel familiar.

Banker is a tale of a young British investment banker involved in a syndicate financing the stud career of a well know champion race horse. After the deal is sealed there arises a problem--it appears the horse is genetically defective. Our Banker suspects this is not entirely a natural phenomenon and starts investigating. As always with Francis, this leads to intrigue, violence and murder.

Francis' ability to skillfully enter into a wide array of worlds in his novels is another strength--the world of investment banking is brought into sharp focus in a way that makes it interesting--not terminally boring, as one would imagine.

Banker is one of Francis' very best works--the characters are vivid and compelling, the mystery here is more refined than usual, the suspense builds very nicely.

If you haven't yet tried Francis, this would be a great book to start with. It will set you on the path to a lot of great reading!

"Banker" is a wonderfully ingenious mixture of horse-breeding, investment banking, and gene-altering drugs. The thoroughness of Francis' research into his storyline left me breathless. A definite "must-have" for his fans! One can almost feel the grief for the hapless victims, and the villian (as true to Francis form) comes straight out of nowhere to shock and surprise the reader. Malicious greed is the motive behind the villian's actions; the reader is motivated to keep reading!

"Banker" was the first book I read by Dick Francis. I knew he had legions of fans, and after reading "Banker" I understand why. He seamlessly weaves the diverse worlds of investment banking, horse breeding, and holistic horse practitioners to paint a realistic, believable and compelling story. Dick infuses this with minute details that make each of these worlds and characters come alive. His skill as a mystery writer comes through in the story's perfect pace. Dick is patient in developing the plot, which covers a few years, and each episode is carefully calculated to build a tightly-knit, exciting conclusion. None of the episodes seem unnatural. His deliberate speed in developing the story does not make for portions of slow reading at all. Rather, the opposite happens, and the book is hard to put down. The characters convincingly grow and develop along the way; even the minor ones are not hollow or contrived. His plotting and character development, as showcased here, occur at such a sophisticated level that any Francis imitators have a tough road ahead of them.

Shame on the publisher for allowing egregious typographical errors such as "burt" instead of "but," "of of" instead of "of," "what so" instead of "what's so, " or "males" instead of "mares". Dick's work deserved better.

Dick Francis has a winning formula: take a youngish man of about 30, who holds a job that most people would think is boring; have him solve a mystery and prove that he is far more observant, more intelligent, and cleverer than anybody expected. Along the way, have his family, who doesn't appreciate him and takes him for granted, find out that he is more important to them than they to him. And an intelligent, middle-aged woman who recognizes his value and will help him in his future career. Stated in a formula like this, it doesn't sound like that much, but the details Francis gives in each book make it fascinating.

Some people might hesitate to read a Francis book, as I did for years- I thought they were just about horse racing and jockeys, and as that wasn't a particular interest of mine, I didn't bother. However, in most of his books written in the last 25 years, although horse-racing is always a part of the plot, the main characters are in all walks and fields of life, and one does not have to love horses and jockeys to read these books.

In this case, our hero's career is investment banking. Some people would start to doze off at the thought of banking, but Francis provides us with details of the job that show the exciting parts of it, the skills required, and the variety that can enter into it.

When the banking firm finds itself asked to invest in a race horse, Tim Ekaterin, the poor relation of the family, turns out to have the knowledge needed for this risk. He also knows enough to recognize that when something goes wrong, it may not be due to natural causes. We meet veterinarians, chemists, and other researchers, all of whose work is described accurately enough to make one suspect that Francis has a friend or relative in every field mentioned and has pried every detail of their daily lives out of them.

The ending is good; the bad guys get their come-uppance, and greed is punished, while our hero is finally rewarded with some recognition in both his personal and work lives.

I am re-reading The Banker for probably the 12th time--this version on my Sony Daily Reader (vs Kindle--sorry Amazon). I have read all the Francis mysteries--many of them multiple times as well. Some of them are fine for what they are--light mystery, good plot action and usually a unique premise/situation...

The Banker is one that I would rank as one of the more mature ones. The characters are restrained but all individualistic and create their own universe very well. The relationship between Tim, Judith, and Gordon I find very believable for people who are not selfish individuals. The truly sad aspect of this novel ties into a major and minor plot situation--the maiming/death of the young--both equine and human.

Francis uses that driving device to bring out the relentless, self-agrandizing ego of another character---one of his most utterly unredeemed in all his novels...and he has had some really bad ones...

The deliberate development of relationships, drawing you as the reader into the personalities of various characters who seem almost extraneous except for padding the length proves to be forging strong links in the chain holding the novel together....and Francis has done his usual, meticulous background research in the field that he is highlighting in the novel...this time stud farms and pharmacology--two aspects that seem as dissimilar as chalk and cheese and yet intertwine with almost hypnotic magnetism...

I really like it.

In Banker, Dick Francis is able to take two things I know very little about -- merchant banking and thoroughbred breeding -- and twist them together in such a way that I can't put the book down. I always find reading Francis to be effortless. He pulls me in from the start with an unusual situation. Young banker Tim Ekaterin finds his boss standing in the fountain in front of the bank with his clothes on. This situation is what leads to Tim being responsible for deciding whether or not the finance the purchase of Sandcastle, a star racehorse. He becomes quite close to Sandcastle's owner and his young daughter after birth defects begin to appear in the horse's progeny -- they all have too much to lose. Francis tends to set his main characters up in almost-but-not-quite inappropriate relationships with young (17, in this case) girls, which is a little weird, but things never cross the line. Regardless, I know when I pick up a Dick Francis book that I'm going to be sucked in until the last page.

The plot of this novel spans two worlds: merchant banking and racehorse breeding. The narrator is Tim Ekaterin, great grandson of the founder of the family bank. Though only in his early thirties, Tim clearly has the family gene for money making. He's both a risk-taker and a careful assessor of risk.

Tim's adventurous streak causes him to look kindly on an offbeat investment. Breeder Oliver Knowles has asked the Ekaterin bank for a loan of five million pounds to buy a racehorse for stud. Not just any horse, but Sandcastle, a famous champion who will take Knowles from middling to top breeder.

As always Dick Francis gives the reader an education, this time on the earthy subject of getting horses to copulate successfully and breed future winners. Knowles acquires his stud horse, but with it comes a world of woe. Tim ends up being the main investigator of a conspiracy that's bigger and nastier than anyone dreams.

There are lots of fun characters in the book: The fifty-year-old woman bloodstock agent who's always in a hurry, the high-betting tycoon who's alternately going broke or getting rich, the young jokester-banker who will do anything for a laugh, the lady pharmacist with an encyclopedic knowledge of drugs, the herbalist who heals sick horses by the laying on of hands.

Banker has it all: murder, heroics, illicit love, low tricks and high finance. I highly recommend it.

I was hooked on Banker by Dick Francis from the opening sentences of the introduction. "It's difficult to say where disaster begins, to point to one particular happening as the first significant step towards distance cataclysm. Tim Ekaterin, looking back, saw the beginning as the day his boss stepped into the fountain."

Francis has made a career of writing mysteries that involve the equestrian world. But in Banker, he weaves a tale that involves both horses and high finance. Tim Ekaterin is an investment banker and the great-grandson of Paul Ekaterin, who began the famous company Paul Ekaterin, LTD. Unfortunately, Tim's parents flittered away their fortune, and Tim find himself working his way up from the bottom at Ekaterin, LTD. When his boss becomes ill, Tim takes over his caseload and has the responsibility of deciding who receives bank loans. He takes a chance on Oliver Knowles. Knowles runs a horse farm, and wants to purchase the successful racehorse, Sandcastle, for breeding purposes. But just when everything seems to be going well, someone starts tampering with Sandcastle. Knowles is in danger of losing his farm, the bank is in line to lose millions of dollars and Ekaterin is about to lose any professional respect he may have gained at the bank. And then people start losing their lives. Ekaterin steps in to try and tie together many unrelated circumstances in a very engaging way.

In Banker, I truly enjoyed reading about how a horse farm operates, and especially, the process of breeding racehorses. As a former jockey, Frances definitely knows his stuff. And while the plot was a little plodding at the beginning, it definitely picked up speed along the way.

The first time I read a Dick Francis book, I hit a dud. I'm so glad that I didn't give up on him as Banker is a first-class book.

I read this book 20 years ago, as a freshly minted graduate with a Master's degree. I identified with the protagonist, and read it eagerly. From here, I became a Francis fan. I've now read all his books, and met the man. It was a great starting point. I don't believe this was Francis' best book - but it symbolizes his style.

Francis' protagonists are always young men with a sense of stoic self-assurance, but also a sense of inner doubt that never seems to reflect itself in outward appearances. Francis' protagonists are what most young men strive for - and something I certainly strived for in my 20s and early 30s. When I've reached tough points in my life, reading Francis has taken me out of the day-to-day problems, and given me a good read to change the subject.

I love the "first person" approach, and the reality of the characters.

So I got 3/4 of the way through this book and realized I'd read it like 20 years ago! That either means it was so forgettable that it made no impression at all on me, or so entertaining that I read it with renewed enthusiasm the second time. It could also mean that all Dick Francis books are so similar, you can't know whether you've read one before. Or maybe my memory is just going.

Anyway, if you've read Dick Francis books before, you know what you're getting: characters of all kinds (smart, cynical, narcissistic, unethical, upstanding, sexy, earthy...), intrigue, horses and racing, twisty plots despite some heavy-handed foreshadowing...

In this case, we have a banker who's been promoted facing whether to make a gigantic loan to a breeder who wants to buy the great colt Sandcastle outright and put him to stud. The breeder has it all figured out, and everything would be fine, but of course it isn't. All sorts of interesting characters criss-cross in the perpetration and getting-to-the-bottom of same. We learn lots about a lot of things: racing, breeding, pharmacology, banking. We feel very clever when we figure things out ahead of time (of course I shouldn't feel so clever, because I'd READ the book before!). We root for the good guys and hiss at the bad guys. Mostly just great fun.

I have to say the unrequited-love story subplot was kind of silly. Besides that, it was a fun little read. Helps if you like horses.