Lead Review

• Book: Hands Down
• Location: Middleham, Oxfordshire
• Author: Felix Francis

Review Author: tripfiction

3.5*

Sid Halley is a former champion jockey. He has also been a casual investigator, but in recent times has resisted taking assignments because he has been worried about the impact on his wife, Marina and daughter, Saskia. The book opens as his wife is announcing a short-term break from the marriage and that she is taking their daughter to stay with her parents in the Netherlands for a while. They need her anyway, as her father is quite poorly.

She cites  as the reason for her departure, the fact that he loves his hand more than he loves her. He lost his hand in a racing accident many years ago, caused by his fellow jockey and friend, Gary Bremner. He has since received a transplant and his current left hand, scarred and mismatched, proves to be a real turn off for her.  He, of course, is totally delighted with his ability to function at a normal level and cites all kinds of double-handed activities that most of us take for granted. It’s just an odd premise with which to open a novel. There is clearly something deeper going on between them (she has displaced her dissatisfaction clearly on to his alien hand); Sid, in turn, is portrayed as having little self awareness (he can at times be quite self referring) and thus the relational issues are never plumbed. Sid hangs on to the little nuggets of hope she drops into their conversations but never seems motivated to explore the fundamental issues festering at the heart of their relationship any further. It can feel just a little shallow.

Gary rings Sid out of the blue to say that he is worried that someone is out to destroy his stables in Middleham, North Yorkshire and asks whether Sid would be available to look into the situation. Sid very clearly declines but the very next day, the news is full of a fire at said Gary’s stables. Gary himself seems to be missing.

Sid is like a horse off the starting blocks and is straight up to Middleham to start investigations, and soon uncovers the rotten core at the heart of British racing.

In many ways this is an erudite and intelligent novel, that bowls along nicely and is easy to follow. Emotional intelligence, though, is not its strength, both the couple relationship and the main character are functional: essentially this is a plot driven story. The story will lead you into the horse racing world and it will show you the sights of Middleham, a market town in North Yorkshire, with a good dollop of historical insight added in for extra colour.

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