Product Description

Matt Shore was an experienced pilot. He'd done it all. From big jets to flying in supplies to war zones. So when he gets a job ferrying high class punters around England's race courses he might be forgiven for expecting the quiet life. But then his plane explodes in a massive fireball. He could have been in it. Some quiet life.

Instead he's landed in the middle of a nightmare world where there is big money at stake. Very big money.

From then on he finds himself hurtling down a tortuous trail where people are not all they appear, and all around him is sudden bloody death...

'Impossible to stop reading' Daily Telegraph

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #91374 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-06
• Format: Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 9999 pages

From the Back Cover

Matt Shore was an experienced pilot. He'd done it all. From big jets to flying in supplies to war zones. So when he gets a job ferrying high class punters around England's race courses he might be forgiven for expecting the quiet life. But then his plane explodes in a massive fireball. He could have been in it. Some quiet life.

Instead he's landed in the middle of a nightmare world where there is big money at stake. Very big money.

From then on he finds himself hurtling down a tortuous trail where people are not all they appear, and all around him is sudden bloody death...

'Impossible to stop reading' Daily Telegraph

About the Author

Dick Francis has written more than forty international bestsellers and is widely acclaimed as one of the world’s finest thriller writers. His awards include the Crime Writers’ Association’s Cartier Diamond Dagger for his outstanding contribution to the crime genre, and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Tufts University of Boston. In 1996 Dick Francis was made a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master for a lifetime’s achievement and in 2000 he received a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

Customer Reviews

A great thriller but a moving human story too
This is my all-time favourite Dick Francis and I've read quite a few. It's not just the thriller aspect of the book - a conspiracy that results in planes being sabotaged and lives put at risk - but the character of the hero, Matt. At the start of the book he is totally burnt-out and disillusioned, working as a pilot for a one-man outfit who only have one decent plane, divorced and unready for a new relationship (even when a pretty girl offers herself to him on a plate). Although his new assignment to ferry a top jockey around brings him all sorts of trouble, it also brings him into contact with new friends and he begins to have something to live for again. Would he have risked his life for any of these people at the beginning of his transformation? I somehow doubt it. And it's this personal story that makes this book such a satisfying read.

One of the best among a host of top Francis books
Dick Francis certainly has a gift of writing well; his characters are pleasingly 3-dimensional, his heroes undergo real problems but are stoic and brave, he can build real tension and tells a pretty good romantic story, too. There is not much to beat a good Francis for an airplane ride, or for when you're sick for that matter - you just read about the way the Francis hero takes his pain, and you feel better already!

Rat race (written in 1970) is a gem even among good Francis books. It's got a pilot ferrying jockeys around, so you get both the horse-racing (which Fracis can make sound really good, even for a non-race goer like me) and the flying; there is a in-the-air sequence here that will nail you to your seat. And the love story is really good, too; again, because he can make his characters so real, through just a few deft descriptions and some easy dialogue, that you find yourself taken along for the ride (sorry).

A top story, from a top writer.