Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Tuesday Book Blogging: Dick Francis lives!

Dick Francis's GambleWell, is referenced anyway, in the awkwardly titled Dick Francis's Gamble by Felix Francis. After all, Dick Francis isn't gambling, is he? Perhaps this should be called G.P. Putnam Sons's Gamble on Dick Francis's Name. But I snark.

I saw it at the CostCo a couple of weeks ago and did not buy it (yay, me). It came in at the library very quickly, making me wonder if people fear the Francis brand has been diluted. But it reads like a Dick Francis, that's for sure, perhaps a hair off the usual Dick Francis, but all the elements are there: the racing connection, the person dropping dead on the first page, the self-contained protagonist caught up in it all. I'm enjoying it a lot.

Here's a teaser from the opening sentences:

"I was standing right next to Herb Kovak when he was murdered. Executed would have been a better word."

Doesn't that sound like a Dick Francis thriller to you?

2 comments:

TBM said...

Love it.

Here's mine:

http://50yearproject.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/teaser-tuesday-aug-16/

Anonymous said...

"'Sir ... I ...' The words were stuttered in confusion. It was not enough that I was clad in dreary black, of which His Highness is said to have the greatest abhorrence; nor that I am well past my bloom, and could not excite admiration with the freshness of my looks; only add to all this, indeed, the profundity of my contempt for the man - who treats all women, particularly his wife, with a publick disrespect and callous conceit not to be borne - and you will understand the desperation of my desire to avoid the Regent's notice."

Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron

perhaps not the best writing in the world, but the book promises to be an entertaining romp anyway - and what else is summer for if not for beach books?