Dick Francis's Gamble

By: Felix Francis

Narrated by: John Keating

Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

Felix Francis continues his father’s New York Times bestselling legacy with another edge-of-your-seat story that’s classic Francis.

Nicholas “Foxy” Foxton, a former jockey who suffered a career-ending injury, is out for a day at the Grand National races when his friend and coworker Herb Kovak is murdered, execution style, right in front of him—and 60,000 other potential witnesses. Foxton and Kovak were both independent financial advisers at Lyall Black, a firm specializing in extreme-risk investments.

As he struggles to come to terms with Kovak’s seemingly inexplicable death, Foxton begins to question everything, from how well he knew his friend to how much he understands about his employer. Was Kovak’s murder a case of mistaken identity...or something more sinister?

“[Felix Francis] has one priceless advantage. He couldn’t have had a better teacher.”—The Washington Times

©2011 Dick Frances Corporation (P)2011 Recorded Books

The Gamble Paid Off

It is good to know that the series will continue. Felix picks up where Dick left off. This is a solid series. Well worth the investment of credits or money.

It's a to go to book...

…As an old member of Audible I own nearly 600 books. Taught to speak American English, British English, Italian and understand my Dutch American step-grandparents before I was four, understanding John Keating is easy. So I loved this book. It's one of my to go to books. Listening to this, and many of both Felix and Dick Francis books, this holds great mysteries, an almost love affair and the wild ride's of racing horses.
I do wish Frances would continue with more.

Felix Francis shows promise

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I wish I had read this book instead of listening to it. Felix Francis does not yet live up to his father's ability to grab the reader, but he does show promise. The flaws in his writing style are of the type that can be smoothed over with practice and good editing. However, the reader's inflection emphasized those flaws.

Would you be willing to try another one of John Keating’s performances?

No.

Any additional comments?

I kept wishing that the book was being read by Simon Prebble or Tony Britton, who did such a fine job with many of Dick Francis's books.

Felix gets better but skip this one. I don't hate

writing is not good in this volume. avoid . I don't mind the performance.

Frustration

I am disappointed and frustrated that I may never know how good a writer Felix Francis is because I could not get past the horrible voice tone and inept reading that was given to this book. As a long time Francis fan I hate to give up after one effort but will never download another book with John Keating as the reader.

A Disappointing Read

I have listened to nearly every Dick Francis book on audiobooks including some written with Felix Francis, but this book is very wooden, predictable and not at all engaging. It is not helped by such bad narration - All in all I would not recommend this book

Awful. Simply awful.

Felix is not his father. The story is slow and predictable, full of unnecessary details, and lacking pizzazz. The narrator makes it worse. Ugh! We love all the other Dick Francis narrators, but this one is particularly annoying.

But all the problems in the book itself could’ve been fixed by a decent editor. Instead, the publisher relied on Dick Francis’s good name and reputation to sell this book. Did they even care about quality? Evidently not. No, the publisher treated us like suckers, like an ATM they used to withdraw money from OUR accounts.

Don’t waste your time and money. This is a bad book with a disappointing narrator from a publisher that only cares about money, not quality, and certainly not readers and fans of Dick Francis.

bloody awful

I've enjoyed many Dick Francis novels. This one does not deserve his name on the cover. Its plot is reasonably interesting, though it depends on obvious mistakes and omissions by the protagonist, and ridiculous coincidences to rescue the him. Also, relevant facts and protagonist concerns are repeated ad nauseum, and the dialog is cliche ridden, trite, and sophomoric.

Not thrilled with this book

The first 30 minutes of the story were almost painful. Then my brain finally tuned out the trite phrases and inept dialogue to concentrate on the plot. The plot is pure Dick Francis, recycled. If his son wants to be successful at this, he desperately needs to take a few writing classes.
The poor main character, although described in classic Dick francis style, comes across as boring and a bit slow rather than a hero to cheer for.
The narrator, bless him, is sharp and whiny. Hope to God that accent is fake because it would be a shame to go through life speaking that way.

Poor narration, average story

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

John Keating is a terrible narrator. If he's narrating children's books, he'd probably be OK. His performance of War Horse was distracting, but reasonable. In this case, a book for adults with serious topics, his intonation detracted so seriously from the topic that it was hard to separate it from the story.

The story itself could have used some significant editing. It wasn't bad, but it felt like a first solo work.

If you’ve listened to books by Felix Francis before, how does this one compare?

Compared to the joint works of Felix and his father, the lead character is more well-rounded. He's not as much of an indominable force as most Francis leads. The narrative though really could have used significant removal of wordiness.

Would you be willing to try another one of John Keating’s performances?

No.