Showing results by author "Dick Francis" in All Categories

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

To the Jockey Club, the racing world would be a better place without Julius Apollo Filmer. An expert in corruption with a devastating line in witness intimidation, and proving to be a slippery character to put behind bars. Baffled, they call in undercover security agent Tor Kelsey to keep an unflinching eye on Filmer and his associates. A mission that takes him from the finest of English racecourses to the wild Canadian interior, on a luxury transcontinental train journey to end them all.

Free choice? There's no such thing, according to Lee Morris. Choice is pre-ordained by your personality. Stratton Park racecourse faces ruin in the hands of a squabbling family. Lee is slowly sucked into the turmoil, unwillingly on the surface but half-understanding the deep compulsions that influence his decisions. One road leads to safety, another to death. How do you know which is which?

On the first day of Royal Ascot, the crowd rejoices in a string of winning favorites. Ned Talbot has worked all his life as a bookmaker – taking over the family business from his grandfather – so he knows not to expect any sympathy from the punters as they count their winnings, and him his losses. He’s seen the ups and downs before – but, as the big gambling conglomerates muscle in on small concerns like his, Ned wonders if it’s worth it any more.

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.

Artist Alexander Kinloch has worked out a good pattern for his life. His home is a small bothy on a remote mountain in Scotland; he paints on commission, from which he derives both pleasure and a decent income; he lives alone and likes it. One day, however, Alexander's peace is violently shattered when he returns home to find a group of strangers waiting for him.

Once a blacksmith, now famous and respected as a newspaperman, Valentine Clark knows everyone who is anyone in the racing world. Aged, confused, blind and dying, he harbours a daunting secret that he is desperate to be rid of. He makes last confession to his visiting film-director friend, Thomas Lyon, whom in his delirium he mistakes for a priest.

At nearly 18, easy-going Benedict Juliard has no stronger ambition than to ride in steeplechases as an amateur jockey. His father, George, driven towards a life of public service and politics, asks his son to enter into a pact that neither of them will commit any act that could destroy the father's growing reputation and career.

When physics teacher Jonathan Derry is unwittingly given some computer tapes containing a bookie-breaking betting system, his sharp-shooting abilities come in extremely handy against the thug who comes looking for them. Fourteen years later, Jonathan's brother William is about to fall victim to the same thug. But this time, William is determined to play a cautious and crafty game. After all, once bitten ...

Steeplechase jockey Kit Fielding has just ridden another winner for his patron – the Princess – when his distraught twin sister Holly comes to him with terrible news. A newspaper is printing stories that will put her husband, Bobby Allardeck, and his stables out of business.Putting aside the age-old Fielding-Allardeck feud, Kit decides to try to find out who is behind these cruel stories.

Amazing what bodily injury could do for a man. A fall from a racehorse had left brilliant jockey Sid Halley dangerously depressed, with a wrecked hand and the need for a new career. And now a bullet wound was helping him find one. He'd been with a detective agency since his racing accident, but it wasn't until some two-bit hoodlum drilled a slug into his side that he was sent out on a case of his own. That was where he met Zanna Martin, a woman who just might make life worth living again.

Henry Grey doesn't particularly care for having been born the heir to an earldom. he is a reserved young man whose greatest problem is his mother's match-making plots and whose greatest joy is to ride as an amateur steeplechase jockey. But on a sudden impulse, he throws in his respectable desk job to join a firm which transports racehorses all over the world.

James Tyrone was the troubleshooting gracing correspondent of the Sunday Blaze, a newspaper dedicated to exposing scandals I the noisiest (and most profitable) way. Ty was accustomed to hot water, but from the day a Fleet Street colleague died after give him some serious advice, he found himself wading deep into more danger than he expected.

When the horse that wins a race gallops in with frothing mouth and popping eyes, what is more natural than to suspect that someone¿s slipped a booster into his oats? With eleven steeplechasers hurtling over the finish line in this pepped up states and all the dope tests conclusively negative, the Earl of October had something of a problem if he wanted to preserve the health of his favorite sport.

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.

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.

Despair, suicide, and obsessive hatred, mixed well with humor, love, and horses, brew up into the story of a battle between one man's nerve and another man's cunning. Robert Finn, steeplechase jockey, finds himself the focus of a malicious campaign which is also afflicting his friends. He sets out to discover its source, and remove it.

Derek Franklin is an injured jockey. The last fence at Cheltenham has left him on crutches. But his brother’s death means even bigger trouble. He inherits a jewellery business, a mistress – and some very shady business associates. Franklin likes to play things straight. But with £1.5 million in diamonds gone missing, he finds honesty can be a deadly virtue.

A beautiful Italian girl driving home in an open top sports car, a little boy playing on a South Coast beach and the senior steward of the Jockey Club on his way to a press reception in Baltimore. One after the other they suffer the same nightmare ordeal - kidnapping. But there is one thing connecting these particular cases. For the Italian girl is a jockey, and the little boy an only son of a racehorse owner.

It’s the classic law of the invader. Get to the strongest guy and smash him, then watch the weaker ones fall like ninepins. Which is just what a vicious gang of horse dealers decides to do when their little kickback scam is threatened with a spot of old-fashioned honesty. But they haven’t reckoned with bloodstock agent Jonah Dereham, a man who belies his quiet exterior with a steely and implacable resolve. They can threaten him, try to burn down his home, even attempt to kill him. But they’ll soon wish they hadn’t.