Longshot
Putnam, 1990
Characters
- John Kendall
- author, survival expert
- Ronnie Curzon
- John's agent
- Daisy
- Ronnie's receptionist
- Tremayne Vickers
- trainer, wants his biography written
- Aunty
- friend's aunt who let John rent her attick
- Mackie Vickers
- Perkin's wife, Tremayne's assistant (maiden name: Magdalene Mackenzie)
- Bob Watson
- Tremayne's head lad
- Harry and Fiona Goodhaven
- own horses, Tremayne is their trainer
- Lewis Everard
- Nolan's brother, Fiona's cousin
- Nolan Everard
- amateur jockey, on trial for strangling Olympia
- Ingrid Watson
- Bob's wife
- Perkin Vickers
- Tremayne's oldest son, married to Mackie
- Gareth Vickers
- 15, Tremayne's youngest
- Olympia
- girl killed by Nolan
- Dee-Dee
- Tremayne's secretary
- Angela Brickell
- 17, worked as a lad for Tremayne, disappeared, bones found by a gamekeeper in the woods
- Chief Inspector Doone
- works for Thames Valley police force
- Jane
- Tremayne's daughter, married to a French trainer (not a character in the book, they just mention her)
- Sam Yaeger
- Tremayne's jockey, also owns a boat house
- Erica Upton
- author ("literary lion"), Harry's aunt
- Coconut
- Gareth's friend
Favorite passages
Survival is a frame of mind. Putnam, 1990 Longshot has lots of great quotes. Two of my favorites are:
I still hadn't put an actual sentence on paper and was feeling tyrannized by all the blank pages lying ahead. I'd heard of writers who leaped to their typewriters as to a lover. There were days when I'd do any chore I could think of rather than pick up a pencil, and it was never easy, never, to dig words and ideas from my brain. Half the time I couldn't believe I'd chosen this occupation; half of the time I longed for the easier solitude under the stars.
It was Nolan, I saw, who had won that race. Nolan himself, not the horse. Nolan's ability, Nolan's character acting on Chickweed's. Through Nolan I began to understand how much more there was to riding races than fearlessness and being able to stay in the saddle. More than tactics, more than experience, more than ambition. Winning races, like survival, began in the mind.
Chosen by members of the reading group in the late 1990s. From Longshot by Dick Francis.
The group read it
We discussed Longshot on April 6, 1998.
This page was first written for the reading group's original site in the late 1990s and was lost when AOL Hometown closed. It has been recovered from the Internet Archive.