Customer Reviews

Longshot

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4 star:		(8)
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This 1990 novel by former jockey Dick Francis features John Kendall, a young man who has written a novel while working as an adventure guide writer. When his novel was accepted by a publisher Kendall took his advance, quit his job and began his second novel. As the story opens he has discovered two things, the first is that writing full time was not as easy as he had thought, and secondly that his advance was not lasting nearly as long as he had hoped. An opportunity to ghost write a horse trainer's memoirs came up, complete with room and board just as Kendall found himself homeless.

While living in the trainer's home Kendall is introduced to the world of racing and some of its intrigues and scandals. As always in a Francis' novel, the hero is stoic and persisent, the family is dysfunctional, the first crime leads to a second, and in the end it is the villian's lack of character that caused all the misfortune.

Francis' work has been criticized as being formulistic, that any one is very like any other. This is true but since they are well written, the characters are interesting, the plots are clever, and the action exciting this means only that the reader is guaranteed an enjoyable read with each new one.

I enjoyed this book enormously when I first read it and bought the audio version just for fun. Kenneth Branaugh really made this book a treat to listen to - fantastic voices and range without over doing it. Dick Francis fans - anyone really - will be thoroughly entertained with Longshot.

"Longshot" centres on events in an old racing family, observed through the eyes of a writer of survival handbooks who has been invited to work on the biography of the patriarch, a successful trainer of racing horses. For the first time in a a few of its ilk, this novel left me wanting to hear more about how the characters went on to live their lives, partly because the resolution left some interesting tensions to work with. Due to the nature of the plot, Francis's characterisations go into more depth than he normally offers, and I wish he'd added another volume.

Longshot by Dick Francis is yet another incredibly well done English murder mystery. The story is strong, with Kendall, a survival expert, giving up everything, comfort, food, warmth and companionship, just so he can write. Then suddenly his writing efforts land him among and unusual family of racehorse trainers. The characters are interesting and the plot tangled, as Kendall relishes all the things he's given up and strives to do anything, but write the story he is there for. From start to finish, it is his survival skills that keep him and in those around him alive and the suspense mounting. It is after all, just another Dick Francis novel, which is to say, it is just wonderfully exciting, entertaining and enlightening.

This is one of my favorite Dick Francis novels -- which is saying something, considering I re-read the whole collection once or twice a year. (I grew up re-reading all the ones I had just before the new one came out, and now it's a pattern, even though there aren't any new ones.)

Longshot is intricate and intense and slightly less spare in its prose than most of his others, although it's nowhere near chatty or verbose:

quote:
...from many open doors came figures leading horses, riders in hard helmets, horses in rugs. In the lights and the dark, with plumes of steam swirling as they breathed, with the circling movements and the scrunching of icy gravel underfoot, the great elemental creatures raised in me such a sense of enjoyment and excitement that I felt for the first time truly enthusiastic about what I'd set my hand to. I wished I could paint, but no canvas, and not even film, could catch the feeling of primitive life or the tingle and smell of the frosty yard.
/quote

Francis is a master at building stories infused with horses and horseracing without making them "about" horses and horseracing, so you don't have to be horse-crazy to love these books. I also like the inside view of the book publishing process in this one, and like to think that he drew on his own experiences with agents and publishers for that.

If you've not read Dick Francis before, this is a great one to start with. Or if you've read the recent Felix Francis novels and are wondering what all the fuss is about, this is a good example of Dick Francis himself. (I have only read a couple of the collaborations/Felix ones, and Felix has a much wordier and less experienced style than his father, although I'm glad for Felix that he could carry on the work if he loves it.)

LONGSHOT is my second favorite among all of Dick Francis' books - and I have read all of them, several times over. My favorite is STRAIGHT, not yet available on Kindle. (Hint)
It is the classic Francis formula, stalwart but modest hero dropped into a strange situation where he must make sense of a suddenly chaotic world and win the day, which he, of course does. What made this one of my favorites is that Francis branches out here, showing us something of a new field, although horses are never completely out of the picture.
John Kendall is a writer of Survival books, a soon to be published novel, and has been commissioned to write a biography of one of the most famous and accomplished of racing trainers, living in the man's home amidst the family while he does so. You can take it from there. This is a tightly plotted, ever twisting and surprising mystery, and a joy to read, through the very last page. My only regret, as another reviewer remarked, was that I would have liked there o be more. I wasn't finished with John and the other characters when Mr. Francis was.

Most highly recommended!

I've fallen in love with many Dick Francis heroes, but John Kendall is perhaps the most appealing of all on many levels: physical, intellectual, psychological.

John at thirty-two years old has written six guidebooks on how to survive in the desert, on the ocean, in the jungle, in the Arctic and so forth.

Alone in the wild he's eaten fried worms and rattlesnake, caught fish and trapped game. He can pack enough miniaturized survival tools in his belt to survive almost anything anywhere.

He'll need every skill he has, and all his inner resources, to survive the plot of Longshot.

When we meet John Kendall he's just abandoned travel writing for serious literature. But he's ended up starving and freezing in an attic, so he decides to warm up with an interim job: a commission to write a biography of Tremayne Vickers. Tremayne is famous in the world of racing and has trained a thousand winners.

Once established in the spacious Vickers household to do research, John finds himself dragged into a murder investigation. The unassuming, chatty, subtly crafty detective in charge appreciates John's insightful views of people and events. John has to choose which side he's on: the cops or his new friends.

John Kendall is a wonderful combination of quiet, compassionate observer and man of action.

With Longshot, Dick Francis has written an adventure story as well as a murder mystery. And he's even managed to slip in some deep thoughts about existence. I loved this book and recommend it wholeheartedly.

When you've ploughed through some over-long, underwhelming piece of trash by a new writer, it sometimes pays off to play it safe. This you can cheerfully do with Dick Francis, whose novels are all the same, but all different. We always have the same hero. Sometimes he's a jockey, an ex-jockey, a struggling writer or a society misfit. But he's always male, straight-laced, dependable in a crisis, aged 20-30 and can ride a horse.

Here we have a classic cocktail of Dick Francis. The details are irrelevant (it happens to concern a small racing village with murder afoot). The main point is the Francis once again delivers something beautifully written and well worth a few hours relaxation. A good bet? You bet.

Longshot features travel writer turned novelist John Kendall who, to make ends meet, accepts a commission to produce the biography of a race horse trainer. Kendall soon discovers, however, that a recent murder at the trainer's home is far from resolved, and unwittingly becomes ensnared in a web of deceit and danger. Kendall is forced to draw on survival skills honed in exotic locations in order to navigate these home-grown perils.

The book's strength, like most Dick Francis mysteries, lies in solid pacing and engaging characters. Francis juggles well a fairly large cast, all with realistic motivations and personal quirks; the only person who does not ring true, perhaps, is the police inspector who obligingly spills facts to Kendall as needed. Kendall himself is another well-crafted Francis everyman, at loose ends emotionally and personally while he tries to pursue a new professional calling. He stands out from other Francis heroes with his specialized knowledge of living off the land, rather hazardous traps, and survival against the elements. And who as a child didn't dream once or twice of surviving in the wild in such a manner? Francis offers, once again, a chance to experience someone else's livelihood and to puzzle together a mystery along the way.

I loved this book. In my opinion, this book and Forfeit are the two best books Francis has written, though all are excellent. I love the way the lead characters are slightly flawed but you love them anyway. John Kendall the main character in this book is so likeable you actually feel his pain. When he is seriously injured in a bizarre manner towards the climax of the book, the way Francis describes it is so chilling and accurate you almost pass out yourself. I hope Mr. Francis brings John Kendall back again in another novel as he has done with such success with a couple of other lead characters. This book is thoroughly recommended with relish.