John Francome: Dead Weight

By MICHELE HEWITSON

The racing thriller genre? Jilly Cooper, but with psychos in the hay barn instead of rolls in the hay, right? Francome is racy enough certainly, but this is pretty good. A jockey turned racing commentator, he knows his stuff, but doesn't get bogged down in racing terminology. He's good on the psychology of the racing set too: a jump jockey has lost his nerve after a fall; his wife talks horses back to health.

And he writes deftly about tough gruff trainers and bastard owners.

Dead Weight's plot centres around a disgruntled punter who believes that the racing world is corrupt, that jockeys and trainers throw races. He decides to take matters into his own hands by knocking off a few. It's the standard journey of rediscovery: will Phil, the jockey who has lost his bottle, find the courage to face The Beast?

Nicely written, well-paced, Francome proves a surprising find - although selling jockeys in jodhpurs as sex-on-a-horse is a task that even Jilly is unequal to.

Hodder Moa Beckett

$34.95