Whip Hand is a crime

Crime fiction

Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Dick Francis

Dick Francis

Richard Stanley "Dick" Francis CBE was an English jockey and crime writer, many of whose novels centre around horse racing.- Personal life :...

, the second novel in the Sid Halley

Sid Halley

Sid Halley is a fictional character and private detective who is the central character in four Dick Francis novels, Odds Against, Whip Hand, Come to Grief and Under Orders...

 series. The novel received Gold Dagger

Gold Dagger

The Gold Dagger Award was an award given annually by the Crime Writers' Association for the best crime novel of the year.For its first five years, the organization's top honor was known as the Crossed Red Herring Award....

 Award for Best Novel of 1979 and the Edgar Award

Edgar Award

The Edgar Allan Poe Awards , named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America...

 for Best Novel of 1980. Whip Hand is one of only two novels to have received both awards (the other being John le Carré's

John le Carré

David John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...

 The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold , by John le Carré, is a British Cold War spy novel that became famous for its portrayal of Western espionage methods as being morally inconsistent with Western democracy and values. The novel received critical acclaim at the time of its publication and became an...

).

Plot Outline

The protagonist Sid Halley is an ex-jockey turned detective who lost his left hand due to an earlier racing accident and subsequent beating by thugs. He is approached by Rosemary Caspar, a trainer's wife, to look into problems at her husband's racing stables. Horses which did extremely well as two-year olds are unexpectedly failing as three year olds. In addition, Sid Halley's ex-father-in-law, Charles, asks Sid to try and find a man who has conned Sid's ex-wife Jenny and left her facing a possible jail sentence over a fake charity. Sid is also approached by both Lord Friarly, a racehorse owner and syndicate member, and Lucas Wainwright, the head of the security service at the Jockey Club, to look into certain syndicates and how they got through the Jockey Club's checking process.

Publication history

• 1979, London: Michael Joseph ISBN 0718118456, Pub date 8 October 1979, Hardback

Sources, references, external links

• Jean Swanson and Dean James, The Dick Francis Companion USA: Berkley Publishing (2003) ISBN 0425181871