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    Even Money
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    Even Money
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    Even Money
    Audiobook10 hours

    Even Money

    Written by Dick Francis and Felix Francis

    Narrated by Martin Jarvis

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Ned Talbot is a small-time bookmaker on the edge of giving it all up when his world is turned upside down by a man who claims to be his father, long thought dead. And when the mysterious stranger is murdered, Ned feels compelled to find out exactly what is going on. But the more he discovers, the longer the odds become for his survival.


    From the Paperback edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateAug 25, 2009
    ISBN9781101079522
    Unavailable
    Even Money

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    Reviews for Even Money

    3.5/5

    173 ratings20 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A good finish (for me--I inherited all of his books up to this one) Bye, bye, Dick Francis. And thanks.
    • 3/5
      It was an interesting view of the horse race society, but for a mystery it was quite slow and lackluster. Everything seemed to fall into place too conveniently, without much effort.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this reading very much. It was fast-paced and breathtaking. Teddy is a bookmaker which he has inherited from his grandfather. At the Ascot horse-racing week his believed dead father turns up. They could speak to each other only briefly because he was stabbed infront of Teddy. Teddy is playing detective and would like to find out what happened with his father (and mother) 36 years ago and why was he murdered. Soon, he detects that in the horse-racing scene nothing looks like it should neither with horses nor the betting. Teddy's wife is in a mental institution due to her bipolar illness. Teddy loves his wife very much and therefore he doesn't tell her that he is into deep trouble. The police isn't any help and Teddy has got the feeling that the inspector hates him. With the help of his employees and his doggedness he is able to solve the mystery. It let me guess about the outcome until the very last page.
    • 2/5
      Meh... I was a huge Dick Francis fan, and even a couple of Dick/Felix books were still OK, but this one is just not up to par. Too many coincidences, too many easy resolutions, too much racing info at the expense of the mystery itself. A disappointment. Still, two stars instead of one because it fairly entertaining and didn't have any of my major pet peeves.
    • 3/5
      The plotting around the aspects of the bookmaking business is careful and quite interesting; but the rest of the plotting is sloppy. The epilogue does not improve the book.
    • 3/5
      The second to last book that Dick Francis co-authored with his son was Even Money. As always it features a bloke who has something to do with horse-racing (in this case he’s a bookmaker) who experiences some unexpected unrest in his life (here it is the appearance of the father he’d thought long dead followed closely by witnessing the man’s murder) which he has to resolve to his peril while dealing with day-to-day life’s tribulations (a wife with severe mental health issues and rough treatment by the ‘big boys’ of his business). I could probably have re-read any of Francis’ 41 earlier books and gotten roughly the same amount of enjoyment and comfort as I received from reading the new one but that’s kinda the point of reading Dick Francis. At least for me. While the details might change the basic formula doesn’t and when you need an engaging if not particularly surprising story which contains enough of a puzzle to keep you interested and characters you are going to enjoy watching overcome their problems (because they undoubtedly will) then Dick Francis is your man. As with most of his books, Even Money is well-written, containing enough detail about a new subject (bookmaking) to keep it interesting, and its characters are engaging. There’s even some humour which might be the influence of Francis’ son and co-author because it’s not been much of a feature of previous novels, and the depiction of someone with mental health problems and the impact this has on loved ones is very credible which shows off the good research, another feature of the Francis novels.
    • 4/5
      Bookie at Royal Ascot has a man hangng round him and when he confronts him, he's told "I'm your father." He believes his mother and father were died in car accident 31 years ago. Heading out to the parking lot, they get mugged and his father is knived and his dying breath is "trust no one." He decides to start investigating on his own and holding back information from the police. Meanwhile his wife who has been under psychartric care is about to come home from the hospital. It always amazes me when characters in books are completely oblivious to the dangers that face them and do ridiculously stupid things.
    • 5/5
      I borrowed the audio discs of this story from my library - once again the story captures you and I always come away from reading Francis' books having learnt something. Audio books are a great way of not missing out on your reading while doing other things.
    • 4/5
      A very satisfying read. I originally read the inside flap when the book came out and wasn't too thrilled with reading about a "bookie" as most of the occupations in Francis' other books are more interesting to me.Decided to buy it being that it was on the $5 rack at B&N. Quite glad I did as was a quick three evening read.
    • 3/5
      Not a bad read, but sure made me nostalgic for the Dick Francis who used to reliably keep me on the edge of my seat with novels that were taut, suspenseful, and spare. Sadly, this plot doesn't really hang together, the main character is somewhat unsatisfying (one of the things that has always, for me, made Francis's thrillers so engrossing was the empathetic "everyman" nature of his heroes), and - most unforgiveable of all - we never get to see the baddies get their come-uppance. No disrespect to Felix, but he's not the talent his dad was ... though he may be able to make a career of sorts out of pale imitations such as this.
    • 4/5
      Felix Francis wrote the book as his dad, Dick Francis is deceased. I guess by keeping his Dad as the author he will sell his books. I enjoyed the book but it doesn't have Dick's stamp on it. Good attention to detail and the suspense is there to a fashion. We are brought into the world of betting at the racetrack. Our main character takes over his grandfather's spot. A father, he thought dead, according to his grandparents, turns up but is killed within hours of their meeting. Teddy Talbot is the main character and is faced with the task of finding out who his father is and why did he leave. Why did his grandparents tell him he was dead? As the mystery unfolds he finds himself in mortal danger. When he finds out the truth, it not at all what he expected.
    • 3/5
      All the basics of a good Dick Francis were there - well researched niche topic to do with racing somehow, male hero beset from all sides who never the less manages to overcome all odds, and a mystery to be solved. However it just wasn't one of his best. The ending left of the 'mystery' left me a bit up in the air, and the overall ending I thought was unrealistic. I did enjoy the insight into the lead's relationship with his wife, although I feel, based on what had been said, far too optimistic a note was struck. As an easy read it will not disapoint, but there are much better Dick Francis novels out there.
    • 3/5
      Not bad, not wonderful. A bookmaker hero in this one, but the villains are oddly unfocused - I think most of them end up being linked, but weakly. The stabber, John Smith, Paddy Murphy, the big bookmaker's muscle, etc - his wife's mental illness is more important than any (though probably not all) of them. And he's - not exactly an unreliable narrator - he tells the truth to the readers at all points - but he keeps discovering that he was systematically lied to all his life, so the truth-as-he-knows-it keeps changing. And so on, and so on. It feels unfocused in my memory already - I'll likely reread it, but it will never be a favorite.
    • 4/5
      So sad that this is the last novel from Dick Francis. I quite enjoyed this tale of the gambling world around horse racing. I learned something new about how it works. Great hero, as always - just a bit too stubborn for his own good, and able to rise to the occasion when things get really rough. In a plot change, the hero is married in this book and there is a side plot of how his wife and he are dealing with her mental illness. Wonder if Felix Francis will keep writing.
    • 2/5
      I buy novels by Dick Francis out of hope for a spark of the old energy, but haven't found it i a while.
    • 4/5
      "Even Money," the third collaboration between Dick Francis and his son Felix in the last three years, is another in the long line of Dick Francis horse track mysteries, and it is a good one. Longtime fans of Dick Francis might react differently to "Even Money," of course, believing that it suffers in comparison to the author's earlier work. I, on the other hand, having only ever read one other Dick Francis novel, and that many years ago, experienced "Easy Money" more as a standalone novel. And as such, I enjoyed it.Ned Talbot is thirty-seven years old and has been a bookmaker all his life, having inherited the family business from his grandfather, Teddy Talbot. In fact, when Ned sets himself up to do business at various tracks, the board above his head still says "Trust Teddy Talbot" on it. With the help of Luca, a computer whiz who accepts and manages each day's bets, Ned makes a decent living for himself and Sophie, his mentally fragile wife. He may be doing quite well but Ned thinks often about how bookmakers are despised by most everyone in the racing world, even those who make their own livings from the services he and his fellow bookies provide.Ascot is not one of Ned's favorite racetracks and, in fact, he seldom enjoys setting up shop there. But because his grandfather had considered participation at Ascot to be one of the firm's best marketing techniques, Ned and Luca are there hoping to make the best of things. What Ned does not bargain for is the stranger who approaches him at the end of the day to claim that he is Ned's father, a man Ned had thought dead for thirty-six years. Just one hour later, as Ned and Peter Talbot make their way to Ned's car, they are assaulted by a knife-wielding thug and Ned begins a frantic race of his own, one he has to win if he is to stay alive.It is relatively common for bookies to be robbed of their day's earnings before they leave the track, but Ned senses that what happened to him and his father is no ordinary mugging. What he discovers in his father's rucksack (30,000 pounds in cash, counterfeit horse passports, an electronic device that reminds him of a television remote, and ten little devices each the size of a grain of rice) confirms for Ned that his father was specifically targeted by the man who attacked them. Now he wants to know why.Even before the sudden appearance of his father, Ned has a lot going on in his world. Sophie is bipolar and her illness has gotten so bad that she has again been institutionalized for treatment; Luca is threatening to quit the firm unless Ned makes him a full partner; and the grandmother who raised him is suffering from dementia and living in a nursing home. Via these subplots, the reader comes to see Ned Talbot as a real human being who has managed to get himself in way over his head - and that is half the fun of "Even Money."I particularly enjoyed the novel's details of how the world of bookmaking works, how odds are set, how bookies cover themselves with side bets of their own (a bit like insurance companies cover themselves by reinsuring their risk through other companies), and how they view themselves and those with whom they do business. I have not been a fan of this type of novel in the past but that little bit of "inside information" makes it more likely that I will seek out other Dick Francis novels now.Rated at: 4.0
    • 4/5
      Even Money by Dick And Felix FrancisTeddy Talbot is a bookie. He laments over the lack of respect that bookies get in the UK. This is a tale of his job, the travails he faces, his wife’s mental illness and his families curious history. I was initially annoyed at the painstaking detail of the world of the legal bookie. It did end up setting the appropriate stage. Teddy was painted as an ordinary guy who faced some extraordinary events with creativity and panache. The setting of the UK horse racing community was colorful and well portrayed. I enjoyed the detailing of how high tech the security of the racing community is. The plot was intricate without being painfully so. It held my interest and you didn’t sniff out all of the nuances until the end. I recommend the book, it was a good mystery.
    • 3/5
      Even Money by Dick Francis with his son, Felix, is the latest Dick Francis mystery/thriller to be published ((2009). I believe it is the third book written by Dick Francis with his son’s input. I have not read the other two. As with all Dick Francis books, this one features the world of horse racing in the plot, in this case with the protagonist being the owner of an on-track betting concern. It opens on the day he discovers that his father, whom he had though dead for the past 36 years, shows up at the end of a racing day and introduces himself. Other characters in the book include a computer geek assistant, a bi-polar wife, an unsympathetic policeman, and the usual Dick Francis “heavies.”I tried very hard to like this book because I’m a huge Dick Francis fan. In fact, I have all of his books except Sport of Kings. I’ve even read most of them more than once. I realize they aren’t great literature, but I’ve always found them to be enjoyable, satisfyingly quick reads. But this one left me flat. Since it is the first new book of his I’ve read since he started working with his son, I hope I’m not feeling badly about the book simply because of that. I’d feared Francis wouldn’t write anything else after his wife died, and was pleased when he started collaborating with Felix. The plot didn’t move very quickly, and most of the writing was dull, lacking the edge I expect from a Dick Francis novel. There were also annoying inconsistencies in the story line that I don’t think Mary Francis would have let slip by. I’m surprised the editors didn’t catch the most egregious one. I certainly recommend this book to any Dick Francis fan, but to anyone new to the author, it isn’t his best by far. Read one of his earlier novels, such as “Whip Hand,” then once you’re a fan, read this one to compare it to his best. 3 stars, though I would have only given it 2½ if it weren’t Dick Francis.
    • 2/5
      The days of Reflex, Odds Against, Hot Money and other books from Dick Francis' prime appear to be gone and, given the last book and this one, the addition of son Felix to the writing team doesn't seem to have helped at all.Cardboard characters—ranging from the trite (the police inspector who hates bookies because his father gambled too much) to the absurd (the bookie's assistant who has the skills to hack casually into the local ISP's servers via his laptop).Nothing inventive about the plot—other than it hinges upon idiotic technical assumptions (for one, the "secret" frequency of horse RFID tags...oh wait...it's 134.2 kHz).And I do have problems when authors try to hinge major plot elements on computers but don't bother to learn about them. "Give it a virus that causes it to chase round and round making useless calculations of prime numbers. That uses up all its RAM..." Umm, no, it wouldn't; calculating primes uses processor time but a trivial amount of memory. If you want to use up all a computer's RAM, your program would simply tell the computer to cough it up...
    • 4/5
      Bookmaker Ned Talbot is astonished when his father, whom he had thought long dead, turns up one day and is quickly murdered. Now mysteries both new and old threaten his peace--and his life.Far from Francis's best, but worth reading.