Risk - Dick Francis

This is the story of a righteous accountant, Roland Britten, who is also a jockey. And it is horse racing which is his first love. But being righteous, he has his share of enemies, the people whose scams he has caught as an accountant, and subsequently reported to the authorities.

It is one of them, apparently, who gets Roland kidnapped and confined in a small dark room. He escapes, and then again gets kidnapped and gets confined in another small dark room. Interim he tries to figure out who was out to get him, and his kidnappers, since they aren’t exactly professionals, do leave a trail which Roland manages to unravel. But that might just have been a very bad idea.

A large chunk of this story is about the confinement of Roland Britten. And while the narration isn’t as fear inducing as say Stephen King’s Misery or Gerald’s Game, it fits well into the genre that Dick Francis writes.

The story flows with an easy narration and witty dialogues and is entertaining. Something that you can read very quickly and feel satisfied about it. Though I must say that the accounting practices in England are very strange indeed. Or atleast they were pretty strange when the book was published. Roland Britten goes about matching a lot of numbers around and about which is not something that any accountant or an accounting firm would do. Well, whatever the case may be, it does make for an entertaining story and a very plausible premise on which the plot is built.

Longshot - Dick Francis

An omnibus of Dick Francis Novels at a book store made quite a deal. A 2-book omnibus at Rs.199. What a steal! Not that I would have bought any other author just because he was cheap. Dick Francis happened to be one of the favorite authors of my best friend, who himself is a book enthusiast like I never could be. Plus, horse racing is actually quite a fascinating topic and even a mediocre plot around that is interesting because of the so many new things you learn about a very glamorous sport. So I picked up Longshot, and got down to reading it.

The plot of Longshot… well, is a bit weak in the sense of your regular crime novel. It involves the death of a nobody, an investigation that would never have a global repercussion, and even the most radical conspiracy theorist would fail to link up the crime in the book to “higher powers”. But such is the story. Dick Francis himself takes a jab at this fact in the book, when his Police Detective sighs with resignation that the dead body they found turns out to be an ordinary stable girl.

Enough of the spoilers already!

The climax, while it is fitting to the story, is not quite that nail-biting a finish as you would’ve liked. And the end, though logical and humane, with no ridiculous dues-ex-machina coming into play (ok, maybe a slight one), does not give that satisfaction of triumph of good over evil.
But despite the novel being only a regular story, I enjoyed every bit of it because of the protagonist. He is a writer… Ok, I hear you say, one more author chooses to have a writer protagonist. Isn’t that the easiest, you ask. Well, perhaps. But the protagonist here is an adventurer, and has written a series of books on surviving in hostile environs. And a lot of tips that he shares through the book keep you hooked, while the story progresses around that. So maybe I would not rate the plot too highly, but when I combine that with the protagonist and his livelihood, Longshot gets a “Thumbs Up”. So if you are the kinds who want some wholesome reading and are not overly concerned about the adrenalin factor of a story as long as the book keeps you entertained, you will like Longshot. To end with a corny line… do give Longshot a shot, it might just hit the bull’s eye.