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74 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vintage Dick Francis!, 31 July 2006
'Under Orders' is vintage Dick Francis. It is almost as though the last six years hadn't happened, but it reminded me how much I had missed him while he was away.
All the classic elements of a Dick Francis novel are there. The hero (in this case, the fourth outing for the jockey turned private investigator Sid Halley who has previously been seen in 'Odds Against', 'Whip Hand' and 'Come to Grief') with his humble yet wise nature and his knack for self-deprecating humour; the racetrack and the horses, without which it wouldn't truly feel right; the arrogant press; the beautiful girl... It all sounds rather cliched, yet the elements have succeeded for 39 previous novels with little variation and still remains a success.
As ever, Dick shows he has a superb ability to keep the action at a steady pace with our hero overcoming various hurdles and speeding up at breakneck speed to the finishing line. Never one to shy away from a showdown with the villain of the piece, Dick always manages to get the reader on the edge of their seat and the finale to 'Under Orders' is no exception.
Like all good crime novels and 'whodunits', 'Under Orders' has its fair share of suspects and various motives and sub plots. Within this story, we have internet gambling, race-fixing and family feuds. I was genuinely surprised by the final revelation.
For all those pessimistic nay-sayers who claimed his wife actually wrote all the books, here is the proof that Mr Francis is a talent to be reckoned with, unless the late Mrs Francis has been using a planchette.
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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
average, 11 Nov 2006
I have read everything Dick Francis ever wrote and I have to say this book was a disappointment. While there is nothing outstandingly bad about it and it is quite well written, compared with his previous books it is certainly lacking both in suspence and in interesting characters. That special atmosphere of the racing world that always captivated my imagination is gone and the information given about it seem forced.
Also, this book is the fourth which features ex-jockey Sid Halley, so an irritatingly large potrion of it was spent explaining his history and his relationship to the other characters, things that are already known to readers who have read the prequels. However, more annoying was the fact that it does not coply with the other books in many ways; e.g. Sid's ex-father-in-law has very different personality, his ex-wife is still inexplicably angry at him, although they made peace in the last book, and Rachel, a little girl dying of cancer whom Sid had come to love as a daughter, is not even mentioned. Lastly, the number of people who had died of or had cancer in this book defies all laws of probability!
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12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Left at the the stalls, 29 Dec 2006
If, like me, you're a Dick Francis fan, don't read this Alzeimher's version of a Francis thriller. If you're not, then don't read it either and invest in "Odds Against", the 1965 thriller that first introduced Sid Halley to us. "Under Orders" is merely a rehash of a number of previous plots, though less convincing and less well written. The book fails to acknowledge the changes occuring in the characters' lives in earlier novels and too often lapses into thinly veiled political polemics. The impression is that of a Grumpy Old Man venting his feelings about Blair's Britain through the pages of a novel which would not have been published were it not for his name. Those feelings may be shared by some of us who live here year round, but it ill behoves Francis to express them when he spends most of his time abroad. The name Dick Francis was synonomous with good crime fiction for the latter half of the 20th century. It hasn't translated to the 21st.
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