Customer Reviews

Whip Hand

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In "Whip Hand" Francis returns with a character first introduced in "Odds Against" Sid Halley. Sid and his partner Chico are on yet again more page turning adventures. When a wife of a prominent trainer shows up(at Sid's door) wanting to know why her husbands "cream of the crop" horse's destined to win the races end up coming in last, and then later end up dieing. Also Sid's ex-wife enters the picture which makes for some great tension. A great read from beginning to end. Dick Francis again does what he does best,that is he writes great page turning mysteries. Happy Reading!

This is the sequel to "Odds Against," and is the second novel about ex-jockey turned PI Sid Halley. It takes you into the world of racetracks, syndicates owning horses, trainers, and bookmakers. Sid becomes involved in two separate cases of people trying to fix the outcome of races, and corruption involving bookmakers, trainers, jockeys, etc. The racing world wants things handled internally (no police) because of the potential scandal. Not everyone gets officially punished, but Sid can give back as good as he gets, especially when he has a heavy artificial arm to use as a club.

The author is very knowledgable about the subject, and you get a good picture of English racing (flat and steeplechase), horse training, and breeding. It is a very big business.

Sid and his employee Chico do get banged about a bit. People are trying to encourage them to go into another line of work. That can be difficult to do with Sid, who has a reputation for being hard and out to win. He got used to bumps, bruises, and broken bones when he was riding.

There are some additional encounters with his ex-wife, and a side case to help her out of some difficulties. Sid still does care about her.

The first three books in the Sid Halley series, "Odds Against," "Whip Hand," and "Come to Grief," are also available in a combined omnibus edition, "Win, Place, or Show."

Last year, someone gave me my first Dick Francis to read, 10 LB. Penalty, which can best be described as horrid. I couldn't believe that someone as prolific as Dick Francis could sell so many books if they were of this caliber. This summer, my same friend gave me a big bag of mysteries to read, and I planned to skip Whip Hand. But as luck would have it, I ran out of books before I ran out of summer and Whip Hand was the only one left. Was I pleasantly surprised! In fact, this turned out to be the best mystery I have read all summer. The main character is Sid Halley, an ex-jockey turned PI whose small stature belies all the hidden baggage beneath. He also brings the same passion to win that he had as a jockey to his investigations. Halley has three separate mysteries dumped on him: a mail fraud, a syndicate fixing and racehorse tampering. The racehorse tampering was especially timely after spending some time in Versailles Kentucky this summer, site of the tragic and still unsolved horse tampering case. Not to give the story away, but this book is filled with action, drama, suspense, believable characters, just a little romance, and a plot that will have you guessing until the very end. Next time I receive a Dick Francis book, I will be a little more anxious to begin reading!

Sid Halley was a top jockey until his hand was damaged beyond repair. When the story begins, he is working as a private investigator specializing in cases related to racing. He receives an unpleasant surprise when his ex father-in-law asks for help tracking down a con man who victimized Sid's ex-wife, Jenny. Jenny hates Sid and is about as rude as she can possibly be even when he's trying to help her. Sid also is asked to look into some suspicious racing syndicates and a trainer's wife asks him to protect a horse she fears is in danger. With the help of his friend Chico, he tries to dig into all of these matters with varying results. Unfortunately, some of the cases turn downright nasty as thugs start looking to dish out beatings and worse as he digs up things better left untouched.

Perhaps because Sid pursues several cases, Whip Hand starts off pretty fragmented and also seems a bit dry. The pace picks up and the story begins to come together in the second half and gets especially tense leading up to the climax. Sid is a sympathetic protagonist as he is tough on the outside but fairly insecure about having a prosthetic hand and some of the threats he receives scare him quite badly. His attempts to deal with that fear are a big part of what make the later stages of the book so compelling.

This was my third Dick Francis book and I must admit that I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the other two. The first third was especially disappointing, but it definitely picked up from there. It's not a bad novel for Dick Francis fans, but I probably would not recommend it to a first time reader. A better choice might be Enquiry which is strong from start to finish.

I had previously been introduced to the character of Sid Halley in the novel Odds Against. I enjoyed the transformation that took place in him in this novel. Not only was he dealing with a number of incidents related to horses that were being killed somehow, but he dealt with his feelings about himself as a man. Injuring his hand had been hard enough for him, and the decision to amputate it was even harder. By the end of the novel,though, he comes to accept himself as a complete and confident person.

I enjoy Dick Francis. I read all of his books, but I dothink the earliest are the best. Like some other mysteryand action heroes--Ian Fleming's James Bond, Robert Parker's Spenser, etc.--Francis's protagonists can walk into an encounter with any number of bad guys and come out alive. But, in a way that is completely unlike any other thriller writer I know, Francis' characters experience fear and pain; when they get injured, they really hurt. I don't mean that there's a lot of blood, gore, or graphic violence; there isn't. But some scenes in "Whip Hand" haunt me, nevertheless.

Most of Francis's books are stand-alones, but this is one of the few that is a second book about the same character. Francis has a winning formula: he writes books about a young man of around 30, in a career most people might think is boring, but which turns out to be exciting. His hero is usually taken for granted and under-appreciated by his family, and under-employed, but in the course of the book proves he is far smarter, cleverer, and more observant than anyone supposed.

Usually, there's a highly intelligent middle-aged career woman who recognizes his worth and helps him along. It's a formula, but the details that Francis provides makes it work every time.

In this second book about Sid Halley, Sid has gotten the artificial hand replacement that was talked about at the end of the previous book, Odds Against. As ever, Francis has done his research, and we find out a great deal about the science and engineering that goes into a working mechanical hand.

The biggest part of this story is not the mystery, although of course that's there, but the story of Sid coming to terms with his own courage in the face of what he fears is cowardice. One of our villians threatens to destroy Sid's remaining hand, and Sid is at first afraid that he is going to give in to that threat. But living with himself after giving in to such threats would be a problem; Sid almost accidentally decides to stand up and against evil instead, and wins out in the end.

Whip Hand takes us down another mystery road with Sid Halley again. You can actually read this before you read Odds Against, as I did, and still keep up with the goings on.
The reason that this is one of the best books by Dick Francis is that he keeps to his nice formula of the underrated guy kicking the bad-guys' trash because he is just tough and sharp as nails; but in addition to his formula, Francis takes us deep into Sid's character and shows us a guy we love. We root for him more than any other Francis character because we know him better and can see some of ourselves in him. The plot as always is clean with some neat twists. This is another entertaining and relatively satisfying title from an author who has mastered his art.

As a general rule, I am a Sci-Fi person first, Fantasy second, Political Thrillers third, and the rest rarely makes my reading list. But someone handed me a Dick Francis mystery a year ago and I couldn't put it down. Since then I've read (or listened to) more than a dozen, and they're all fabulous. As was mentioned by another reviewer, these are definately formula books: he writes essentially the same character every time, and all the plots involve horse racing at least peripherally. And of course our hero (a blindlingly inteligent, 30-something, self-assured, and intensely private male) nearly always starts lonely and ends with the prospect of happy permanent female companionship. Nevertheless, they're still very much worth reading, probably for the same reason Tom Clancy is worth reading: the effort and research Francis puts into the details. In Whip Hand one gets to learn not only about the mechanics of false hands but also some nuts and bolts about vaccination and horse disease, some high points of hot-air balloon racing, and how a horse ownership syndicate works.

Even more importantly for Whip Hand, Francis really threw his heart and soul into Sid Haley, who is hands down (no pun intended) his best character ever. There's a depth to him - his strengths, weaknesses, the double-edged sword of his pride, and his vulnerability that is thought provoking and ultimately endearing - I ended the book more than 1/2 in love with him. :)

To sum up, Whip Hand is Well worth the read, whatever your typical genre and whatever your feelings about horses.

WHIP HAND features a second mystery using the ex-steeplechase jokey turned detective, Sid Haley
Read a Dick Francis is like going to an exciting movie which has you on the edge of your seat. The wife of a trainer comes to Sid with a problem, the winners her husband trained are coming in last and then dying. She suspects fixing on the turf and begs Sid's help in discovering the culprit. The racing authorities prefer to settle their own problems.
Sid's ex-wife returns for an engagement, she learns that winning is Sid's main goal and she cannot place in the show. Sid and his partner Chico face heavy inducement to retire from the field, but the story sets the pace until the final lap.
Nash Black, author of TRAVELERS and SINS OF THE FATHERS.