SECOND WIND [Hardcover]

Dick Francis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 4, 1999

The grand master of crime fiction gallops once again into the winner's circle with his extraordinary new novel.

Dick Francis takes us on his most electrifying, death-defying ride yet in Second Wind.

The catastrophic power of a giant hurricane can raise coastal waves thirty feet high and blow through houses at devastating speeds. For TV meteorologist Perry Stuart, however, such predictions are generally hypothetical, as he chiefly predicts periods of English drizzle, with bursts of heavier rain and sunshine to follow. Stuart's profound weather knowledge and accuracy have given him high status among forecasters, but no physical baptism by storm.

Not, that is, until a fellow forecaster offers him a Caribbean hurricane-chasing ride in a small airplane as a holiday diversion. But a frightening accident teaches Stuart more secrets than wind speeds . . . and back home in England he faces threats and danger as deadly as anything nature can evolve.

Dick Francis "has simply never failed. Every one of his opening sentences pulls the reader in, and doesn't let go until the last, perfect word," according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Second Wind may be his greatest triumph yet.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Dick Francis's legion of admirers can relax: his year off from writing since the 1998 publication of Field of Thirteen is over, and a new vigor has entered his style. Longtime readers will be happy to find the customary racetrack skullduggery, galvanized by some fascinating new elements.

The very opening of Second Wind signals something new, with Francis's protagonist, meteorologist Perry Stuart, fighting for his life as he flies through the eye of storm on Trox Island, a blighted place steeped in guano and harboring a nasty secret. "But now, as near dead as dammit, I tumbled like a rag-doll piece of flotsam in towering gale-driven seas that sucked unimaginable tons of water from the deeps ...."

When the reader encountered details of the racing world in Francis's earlier thrillers such as Whip Hand and Reflex, they had the satisfying ring of authenticity. The same is true in Second Wind--Stuart's character was developed with the help of BBC weatherman John Kettley.

Although this is a new venue for Francis, he still has a knack for quickening the reader's pulse with a few carefully chosen words: "Despair was too strong a word for it. Perhaps despondency was better. When they came for me, they came with guns." --Barry Forshaw

From Publishers Weekly

With his 40th novel in as many years, grand master Dick Francis isn't up to his usual high standards, but fans know that even a subpar Francis is in the 95th percentile. Here the typical Francis hero is a young Englishman of a vanishing breed: smart, self-effacing although very good at his job, polite and thoroughly decent. Perry Stuart is a well-known TV weatherman for the BBC who was orphaned as a child and raised by his beloved, now crippled grandmother, who remains tartly sensible ("If you can't fix it, think about something else"). Joining fellow BBC weatherman Kris Ironside on a flying jaunt into the eye of a Caribbean hurricane, Perry survives when the plane crashes and washes up on a tiny, apparently abandoned island where the houses were destroyed by the hurricane. In a hut, he stumbles across a safe containing a mysterious file folder whose contents he cannot decipher. After a crew wearing radiation-protection suits arrive by air to rescue him, Perry's troubles are only beginning, as he slowly becomes aware of a sinister scheme in which well-off people are brokering enriched uranium to foreign nogoodniks. Among the cast are mushroom mogul Robin Darcy and his flashy American wife, two old SIS spooksAthink an aging James Bond and a tottery MAand a beautiful nurse who is Perry's circumspect love interest. Perry continues to encounter danger: the sabotage of another plane he's on, threats by a muscle-bound thug in Grand Cayman. Francis's writing is smooth and intelligent, moving the reader right along, but the end of the book is more than a tad far-fetched. Still, ex-RAF pilot and champion steeplechaser Francis knows his stuffAand of course race courses figure in the plot. BOMC main selection; Audio Books main selection; 3-city author tour. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 293 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult (October 4, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399145621
• ISBN-13: 978-0399145629
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (90 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #702,432 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dick Francis was the author of more than forty acclaimed books. Among his numerous awards were three Edgar Awards, the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger, and the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award. He died in February 2010.

Felix Francis has assisted with the research of many of the Dick Francis novels and is the coauthor of Dead Heat, Silks, and Even Money. He lives in England.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Francis disappoints, for one of the few times, in this effor, November 18, 1999

By 

James C. Coomer (Norcross, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: SECOND WIND (Hardcover)

Second Choice is one of the few time Francis disppoints. When he moves away from horses, he moves aways from the environment he knows best which forces him to focus on the technical information that he has learned which he wants to us as a background for his new novel. In Second Wind, he has studied hurricanes. He tries to create a story in which he can use his new found knowledge. We learn a lot about hurricanes, flying into hurricanes, and tracking hurricanes, but the story he attempts to create with hurricanes as a backdrop never seems creditable. These aren't the usual believable Francis characters, nor a tightly woven plot. The background became the foreground. Even the ending seems forced; i.e., how do I bring this thing to a conclusion.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Second Wind-Comes in trailing the field, February 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: SECOND WIND (Hardcover)

I am a die hard Dick Francis fan - I have reread most of his books several times. This one I won't. It's disjointed and extremely slow to get to the plot ( which is so convoluted that even at the end it didn't make sense). I had to force myself to finish it in the hopes that it would get better, it didn't. There was very little character developement, far too many of the pages were taken up by descriptions rather than plot enhancement or better yet - plot explanation. It reminded me of the later Louis L'Amour books that were pages and pages of the same thought (who am I, why am I here, etc.) I really hope that Mr. Francis goes back to the good basic story and characters that have won him so many fans.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very Disappointed, March 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: SECOND WIND (Hardcover)

I have to agree with most of the others. Did Dick Francis actually write this book? If so, what happened? I kept reading in hopes that the uninteresting, convoluted plot would get better if I just gave it a few more pages. It never did. Don't waste your time with this one. Go get one of your old Dick Francis favorites and re-read it instead.