Showing results by author "Dick Francis" in All Categories

At an annual party to celebrate the success of the racing season, everything seemed to be running well to form, including the need for more champagne. Then a runaway horsebox ploughed into the marquee. A witness to the terrible death and destruction, wine merchant Tony Beach knows it is just one of those tragic accidents. But when his expert advice is called into play over sub-standard alcohol in a local night club, connections start to click, and another person dies, horribly.

Australian horse breeder Daniel Roke had resisted the exorbitant sum of money offered by a suave Englishman to investigate a scandal involving drugged racehorses. But after another investigator dies mysteriously, Roke agrees to fill his shoes, and learns that men who would give drugs to horses are capable of doing much worse to human beings …

The catastrophic power of a giant hurricane can raise coastal waves 30 feet high and blow through houses at devastating speeds. For TV meteorologist Perry Stuart, however, such predictions are hypothetical, as he chiefly predicts periods of English drizzle - 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.

Malcolm Pembroke never expected to make a million pounds without making enemies. Nor did he expect his latest wife to be brutally murdered. All the clues suggest the killer comes from close to home, but after five marriages and nine children, that still leaves the field wide open. When he find his own life in danger, Pembroke entrusts his safety to his estranged son, Ian, an amateur jockey; and through him discovers a compulsive new outlet for his financial expertise.

Sid Halley, the ex-champion jockey turned investigator who appears in Odds Against and Whip Hand, is back and facing new dilemmas and dangers. The opening finds him having uncovered an obnoxious crime committed by a friend whom he, and everyone else, has held in affection bordering on love.

Steven Scott is relatively new to horses. A successful, wealthy inventor, he takes up horse racing as a hobby - a hobby that soon brings him winner after winner under the inspired guidance of his trainer, Jody Leeds. Currently both their reputations are wrapped up in a beautiful black hurdler named Energise. But just when Steven is winning at both women and horses, he discovers deceit in his own stables. Termination of the troublemaker marks Steven for his own termination - and much sooner than he can imagine...

Sid Halley had one good hand and another made of metal. Five hundred pounds of horse had landed on him, directly ending his career as a brilliant jockey - and indirectly ending his marriage to the woman he loved. He had become a private investigator, quite a good one, though his new life could never erase the haunting memories of his past glories.

Edward Lincoln is a worldwide celebrity who plays impossibly daring detectives on the big screen. But in reality he is an ordinary man currently stuck in an extraordinary spot. Nerissa, his ailing godmother, had pleaded with him to travel to South Africa to investigate whether someone was tampering with her racehorses. He could not refuse her.

It’s amazing what bodily injury can do for a man. A fall from a racehorse left brilliant jockey Sid Halley dangerously depressed, with a wrecked hand and the need for a new career. It was a bullet wound that helped him find one.

When English agent Gene Hawkins told his boss he'd forego his vacation to search for millionaire Dave Teller's prized missing stallion, he didn't know his retainer would include the attention of his boss's beautiful teenage daughter - or Teller's seldom sober wife. He also didn't know that a trail from London to New York to Las Vegas to California would lead eventually to murder.

hampion jockey Robert Sherman has disappeared right before his wife was about to give birth. And right before he was sure to win the National. A coincidence? British investigator David Cleveland doesn’t think so. He’s convinced someone made Sherman disappear, but with every answer David gets, the body count rises. And if he isn’t careful, the next body might just be his own.

Jockey Kelly Hughes and trainer Dexter Cranfield have been barred from racing - a devastating event for them both. The charge at the secret enquiry? Throwing a race for personal profit. It is a vicious frame-up and, worse, they have nowhere to turn to clear their names. Still Hughes refuses to take the phony verdict lying down - even though his personal enquiry might have him lying down permanently...

Fast-paced radio dramatisations of six of Dick Francis's classic racing thrillers, plus bonus documentary.

A dead hitchhiker, empty canisters found at the bottom of several trucks, and the murder of a harmless mechanic are the bizarre events that lead ex-jockey Freddie Croft to suspect that his transport company, Driving Force, is involved in drug smuggling, or something far worse.

Sid Halley, the ex-champion jockey turned private investigator, is facing new dangers, new deeply demanding decisions. His friend Ellis Quint has everything he could want: fame, youth, money, good looks, and talent. What Sid has to figure out is why he has committed such an obnoxious crime. On the morning set for the opening of Ellis’s trial, at which Sid is due to be called as a witness, other people’s miseries explode and send him spinning into days of hard rational detection and heart-searching torment.

Charles Todd is an English artist who is well known and respected for his renderings of sleek and athletic horses. What he now faces at his cousin Donald's house is also art - the art of a perfectly brutal murderer. Donald's home has been burglarized and his wife, Regina, is lying on her back dead, her face the color of cream. Donald is shattered, shocked, and a prime suspect.

Featuring the gripping plot, dramatic settings and believable characters that listeners have come to expect from Dick Francis, To the Hilt displays the master at the top of his form.

Sid Halley’s career as a jockey—and his marriage—were brought to a sudden end by a heartbreaking accident. His glory days are over, but now, as a private investigator, he still finds a certain satisfaction in successfully solving a case. His latest one, though, could prove to be his undoing. Rosemary Casper, wife of an elite racehorse trainer, has begged for his help in figuring out why her husband’s most promising horses have been performing so poorly. Halley thinks she’s overreacting at first. Then hints of deceit and brutal danger make him think twice.

Philip Nore is nearing the end as a jockey. George Millace is finished in photography. The differnce is, Millace is dead, and Nore has discovered his secret: a set of files which would blow the top off the racing world. Hated by a dying grandmother he has never known and abused by a trainer he knows only too well, Nore is no stranger to shabby morals. And when he begins to decipher the dead man's photographs, he uncovers corruption on a scale he had never imagined.

The pleasure of a day at Sandown is spoiled for Steven Scott when he sacks his trainer, a one-time friend whom he suspects is a crook. Racing may have its rewards, but as Scott finds out not all of them are innocent, or legal.