Longshot: Risk

By Dick Francis

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0330443720
• ISBN13: 9780330443722
• Release Date: December 2005
• Publisher: PAN BOOKS LTD (ENGLAND)
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Excellent stories and narration, heavily abridged

I love Dick Francis books, the easy way he writes always pull me in to the stories. The settings and characters are always varied and interesting and most of all believable. Risk dives right in with the hero winning at horse racing, attacks, kidnapping and escapes. Its all terrific fun and the hero is typical of Francis books, a mild mannered but intelligent person, in this case an accountant. Longshot starts a lot slower as the hero is a writer who gradually learns about an old death and begins to find that the issue is not resolved. The audio edition is superb, with the different narrators of the two stories doing an outstanding job. Different characters are given subtle emphasis to make them stand out without the goofy-sounding attempts by some to sound like completely different people. Rather than simply reading the words they put the right emphasis, sound tired or excited, etc. and really enhance the words to make listening a pleasure. The downside of the audio edition is that it is heavily abridged. The books are 288 and 336 pages in print yet are reduced to 3 cd's each (usually an unabridged book runs 7-10 cd's). While the editors generally do a good job and the stories are understandable they do suffer from the extreme cutting and most of the flavor of detail one comes to expect from a Dick Francis novel is gone. There were many times that I wondered why someone was doing something or commented that their actions didn't make much sense, and I expect its mostly due to the cutting out of non-essentials that would have helped the listener understand. This was particularly true in Risk where after surviving 2 kidnapping attempts Roland goes back to work and acts as if everything is normal. In summary, if you have not experienced a Dick Francis novel or have never read these particular books and are looking for the unique experience of having a professional read them to you in a most pleasing fashion - I heartily recommend these audio books. Just be warned you are missing half of the story.