10-lb Penalty

10-lb Penalty

by Dick Francis (Author)

Synopsis

At eighteen, easy-going Benedict Juliard has no stronger ambition than to ride as an amateur jockey. His father, immersed in politics, asks his only son to enter into a pact that neither of them will commit any act that could destroy the father's burgeoning career. Ben agrees lightheartedly, but ten years later finds himself targetted in a vicious attack mounted by his father's increasingly violent political enemies as he makes his drive towards the Prime Ministership. In practice, a 10-lb penalty is the maximum extra weight a winning thoroughbred is normally set to carry in a race. A 10-lb penalty can be a killer.

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Quantity

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: Michael Joseph
Published: 04 Sep 1997

ISBN 10: 0718142454
ISBN 13: 9780718142452

Author Bio
Dick Francis was one of the most successful post-war National Hunt jockeys. The winner of over 350 races, he was champion jockey in 1953/1954 and rode for HM Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, most famously on Devon Loch in the 1956 Grand National. On his retirement from the saddle, he published his autobiography, The Sport of Queens, before going on to write forty-three bestselling novels, a volume of short stories (Field of 13), and the biography of Lester Piggott. During his lifetime Dick Francis received many awards, amongst them the prestigious Crime Writers' Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger for his outstanding contribution to the genre, and three 'best novel' Edgar Allan Poe awards from The Mystery Writers of America. In 1996 he was named by them as Grand Master for a lifetime's achievement. In 1998 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List of 2000. Dick Francis died in February 2010, at the age of eighty-nine, but he remains one of the greatest thriller writers of all time.