A fun thriller in the classic Francis style…
I’ve long liked Dick Francis’ books, which always had some sort of tie-in to horses and horse racing. And that made for good, usually somewhat thriller-ish, mysteries. But I liked his books even more for their amazingly detailed backgrounds in a variety of businesses – and most of the time he had a different setting for each book. My mind simply boggles at the amount of research that takes. Sometimes the business was simply racing itself, but more often it was in some other area that was closely aligned to racing, such as transporting the horses to their races, or making the art glass sculptures used for race trophies, or providing the wine and spirits for racing parties. And while reading Francis’ books, I’ve painlessly learned about a lot of different industries, which was just plain fun, and has also helped me in more than one game of Trivial Pursuit!
Syndicate is written by Dick’s son, Felix Francis, and not by Dick himself, who passed away a while back. But it has the same approach: it’s a thriller set in in the high-stakes world of the syndication of horses for racing and eventually, hopefully, if the horse races well, also for stud. Don’t worry if you don’t know exactly what that means going in – Felix explains it all without being boring in the least! And as usual with a Francis book, either father or son, I enjoyed the story, but enjoyed the background setting even more.
Sadly, though, I did have one issue with Syndicate, which was that I found the protagonist, Chester Newton, to be rather unlikeable. (To be fair, he did get less annoying toward the end of the book.) I understand that in theory, main characters shouldn’t necessarily have to be likeable to still have a good book. But when I’m reading genre fiction, it’s usually for relaxation and enjoyment, and I DO want the protagonist to be someone I can empathize with. So Newton’s personality was an ongoing niggle. That was enough for me to take away a star, dropping Syndicate from five stars to four. But since I don’t give five stars easily anyway, four stars means Syndicate is still definitely worth reading. And finally, my thanks to the publisher, Crooked Lane Books, and to Net Galley for the advance review copy.
Buy (out now in the US and Canada, out Sept 26 in the UK): Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon Canada | Kobo US | Kobo UK | Kobo Canada
And see here for my review of an earlier Felix Francis book, Iced.
As a reader who has collected and all of the Dick Francis and Felix Francis novels I question who wrote the boring book! So many empty pages, at least 30 of the 389 are blank!
A poor plot and too much written on a guide to horse racing and racecourses that most ‘Francis’ book aficionados will find condescending and boring.
C minus must try harder next time!
Not quite sure what you mean about blank pages ??? – my review copy was fine, but may differ from the version that is on sale. If there are blank pages, you should report it to the site that you bought it from, and they can notify the publisher.
Otherwise, as I mentioned, I was fine with the plot and the background myself (and didn’t feel condescended to), but really didn’t like the main character, which was the major issue for me. But tastes vary, and thank you for the additional input!