Attain Decider Composed By Dick Francis Conveyed As Booklet

probably would have given this one five but was so disappointed in the ending!

Lee Morris is an architect with six sons all young.
It is obvious from his story that he is very proud of them and loves each one but sadly, his marriage is struggling.
However he is committed to his family, and is about to prove his commitment when his family is introduced to danger at the racetrack.


Lee is through marraige distantly related to a family of shareholders and because of a tragic past, has never attended the meetings.
However, learning that the racetrack is faced with either a permanent closing, or pointless renovations Lee's field, he decides to attend a meeting.
The hostility of the family is perhaps a little overdone but has the reader pulling for Lee all the way.


When one of Lee's boys discovers a trail of hidden wire at the racetrack, the danger begins and as always, the hero of the novel will have to prove his mettle.


Another fastpaced Dick Francis mystery that kept my interest all the way, A rollercoaster! Lee Morris is the kind of guy youd want for a friend, Hes selfassured in many ways, physically strong and mentally at the top of his game, Lee makes a living by prowling around Britain scouting out old ruined buildings and businesses he can remodel, restore, and revitalize.


Lee shares his house with his wife, Amanda, and six boys, Hes a good dad despite the coldness and apathetic distance of the marriage, which is crumbling and dying not from verbal abuse so much as from a lack of love and compassion.


As this book opens, Lee has just finished restoration of an old barn, turning it into the house he, Amanda, and the boys now share.
Its a remarkable structure, a real attention getter to any visitor, And Lee indeed has some visitors as this book begins, Too officials from a nearby racetrack come to beg for his help, It seems the tracks owner has died, leaving in his wake a family tearing itself apart over what should be done with the aging track and grandstands.
But why would the visitors come to Lee Morris Because many years ago, before Lee was born, his mother was married briefly to one of the hyperabusive sons of the wealthy racetrack owner.
He regularly beat Lees mother and once impregnated her against her will, So traumatized was she by that event that she couldnt raise the resulting childa girl, She left the home, but the family quickly closed ranks around the son, and she agreed to never mention the abuse and marital rape as long as she could simply be left alone.
The racetrack owner, a kindly enough man, recognized that his son was inherently evil, and gave Lees mom several shares in the track, assuming she could sell them to gain enough money to start anew.
Instead, she kept the shares, and they eventually reverted to her son, Lee, upon her death, Hes paid little attention to them over the years, simply going about his business remodeling old buildings and selling them.
But on a particular spring day just before Easter, two gentlemen from the track arrive at Lees home to plead with him to assist in preserving the track and its grandstands.
His eight votes, they feel, could make a difference in terms of the tracks preservation,

Lee initially declines their offer, but a series of events cause him to change his mind and actually show up at a board of directors meeting wherein all of the family factions with their naked hatred for one another are in full bloom.


Amanda wants Lee and the boys out of the house for a week, so she insists they go with him to the track during the boys spring break.
While there, they witness a horrible racing accident that kills a rider and horse, And on Good Friday, one of Lees sons notices what look to be wires connecting plastic explosive charges together running throughout the grandstands.
He quickly alerts his father, and the boy and his father must now rescue the other boys who are playing in the grandstands.
All but one boy leaves the area, and while Lee searches for hisyearold son, the stands explode in a horrific manner.
Lee and the boy are reunited just seconds before the grandstands blow, and while the boy is spared, Lee sustains injuries on his back and legs as some of the structure falls in on him.


The remainder of this book focuses on Lees efforts at revealing some of the destructive family secrets that prevent its members from working together.
Lee is in constant danger from family members who want him dead, including his half sister, the girl born as a result of the forced sexual assault and the man once briefly married to his mother.


You may be able to predict how this one turns out, but its a thrilling actionpacked mystery just the same.
Dick Francis does a magnificent job as usual with this plot, Youll learn fascinating things about British architecture, but not to such a degree that you will glaze over and lose interest.


What singularly strikes me about this book is Franciss way of developing his characters, Even Lees sons are beautifully developed and superrealistic, Their differences and strengths and weaknesses are used by this author to move the plot along nicely.
So vivid is the description of Lee and Amandas crumbling atrophying marriage that your very heart hurts for both of them.


The Stratton family, who are so hateful to one another and so divided as to the future of the racetrack, are also masterfully developed.
This book ends very satisfactorily in one sense, and somewhat sadly in another, but I wont go into that here lest by some means I spoil it for you.


If youre looking for that perfect action mystery thriller to serve as the soundtrack for your spring cleaning efforts or even to hang onto for that first trip to the beach or the mountains, this one really fills that niche.
There arent so many characters that youll get confused trying to figure out whos who, The plot is consistently fast and constantly interesting, Youll marvel at Franciss economy of wordssaying so much with so little, This is a rather short book, but long on character development and excitement, Youll see the basic decency in both Lee and Amanda and yearn for them both to find the best solution that works for them.
Youll cheer for those boys, too, So detailed are their descriptions that you feel as if you know each one of them individually.

The dysfunctional Stratton family are owners of the Stratton Park racecourse, The racecourse is old and in need of repair but the family is divided on what to do: modernize, leave asis, or sell.
Lee Morris, related through the elder Lord Stratton, owns seven shares and decides to attend one of the shareholder meetings.
That was where he became aware of the family secrets so dear that theyd do anything to cover them up.
Lee takes an interest in the proceedings, As an architect, he understands the drawings being considered, But knowledge can be a very dangerous thing, especially when your life and the lives of your children are at risk.

One of the better ones, in my opinion, How Dick Francis comes up with fresh ideas is a wonder, But it is all believable and fast paced, In typical fashion, Lee gets himself in some situations that youd wonder if hed get out, and yet you know deep down he will because it wouldnt be a Dick Francis mystery if it didnt follow this pattern.

I've read Dick Francis before but enjoyed this one so much I will be picking up more from him in the near future.
I actually found myself disappointed at remembering that I had finished this book when I would find a moment to hit "play.
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I've only read a few of his books years ago and, as this one does, it is my understanding that they all deal in some way with horse racing.
I don't know if any of his others are written as a "series" but this one is stand alone.
It features and architect who specializes in refurbishing old relics and creating new and exciting dwellings anything from old pubs to barns.
He has SIX boys so this story hadaspects of the story that had me interested from the beginning: architecture and multiple children.


This mystery isn't gruesome in any way and while there were some truly despicable characters, nothing from this that I had to mute if a child walked in.
Very enjoyable. This is my favorite of the Dick Francis novels, I fell in love Lee Norris, He is someone I would like to know in real life, The story is intense and low key at the same time, When the protagonist in Dick Francis novel is hurt and they usually are, they hurt but keep going.
Part of the appeal to his novels is this approach to life, Even though he started off writing about jockeys, Dick Francis continued on to write about so many other fields, like in this on where Lee Morris is an architect who inherits some shares in a privately owned racetrack.
The dissension among the family/owners put Lee in the middle of things, With sabotage, bombs, and guns, there are some memorable scenes, I love this one. It's the first mystery he's ever written where the hero had kids, so he gave him seven.
All boys. On the other hand, he went back to the unhappy marriage theme letting the wife have an affair and the hero long to have one.
Can't have everything. A great example of the history factor where it is only by learning what characters have done that the hero can blackmail his way to safety.
Also a fine example of psychological detection, since the hero must consider the various members of a large family to figure out who is the criminal.
Compounding the difficulty of figuring it out, there are multiple crimes and criminals, More stock Francis: the older ironwilled woman, wealthy, capable of graciousness that the hero comes to like and admire the Queen Mother I can't help but wonder and the angelic mother now dead in this case.
He deals with topical issues again, namely domestic and sexual violence, and I love the architecture stuff.
Best of all, the hero lives in a barn with his brood,

JanThis may be my favorite Dick Francis novel, with an atypical hero whose quiet architectural brilliance and unusually creative parenting of five boys sticks in my mind.
This is my second read of Decider and I liked it even more this time, admiring the elegant turns of phrase, realism, and depth of character Francis creates.
The integration of plot, character, and setting is OH so satisfying, One of these days Im going to list out my favorite Dick Francis stories and I think that Decider will rank number three on the list.
Its a wonderful mystery and an even more wonderful story of a father and his young sons.
Through a complicated series of events, Lee Morris has come to own an eight percent share of a racecourse and that share drags him into the highly complicated politics of the uber rich Stratton family.
The Strattons are a highly dysfunctional family with dozens of secrets some of which are worth killing over.


But in addition to the classic mystery, you get the story of Lee and his sons and it is both heartwarming and critical to the development of the plot.
Add in that Lee is a buildera restorer of wrecked homesand you get two score interesting pieces of trivia about the building trade and what it takes to run a successful business like a pub.
And of course, there is racetrack lore aplenty as you will always find in a Francis book.


The only thing wrong with this novel is that the mystery gets solved and the book comes to an end.


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