Odds Against
M. Joseph, 1965; Harper, 1966
Characters
- Sid Halley
- 31, ex-steeplechase jockey
- Radnor
- founder of Hunt Radnor Associates, Sid's boss
- Thomas Andrews
- thief who shot Sid
- Jenny
- Sid's wife
- Chico
- works for Hunt Radnor Associates
- Rear-Admiral Charles Roland
- Jenny's father
- Mrs. Cross
- Charles's housekeeper
- Chief-Inspector Cornish
- Viola
- Charles's elderly widowed cousin
- Rex van Dysart
- Mrs. van Dysart
- Howard Kraye
- collects quartz (Real name: Wilbur Potter)
- Doria Kraye
- Howard's wife
- Lord Hagbourne
- Senior Steward
- Mark Witney
- 38, racehorse trainer, Sid's friend
- Ellis Bolt
- Kraye's stockbroker
- Captain Oxon
- racecourse manager at Seabury racecourse
- Ted Wilkins
- crew foreman at Seabury racecourse
- Mervyn Brinton
- brother of William Brinton, who had been Clerk of Dunstable racecourse
- Zanna Martin
- secretary for Ellis Bolt
- Fred
- the "muscle" in the Kraye gang
- Mr. Fotherton
- Clerk of the Course at Seabury
- Noel Wayne
- Sid's accountant
Favorite passages
I thought this was an interesting quote: The Sid Halley books are: Odds Against, Whip Hand , and Come to Grief .
As my smallness had always been an asset for racing, I never looked on it as a handicap for life in general, either physical or social. Neither had I ever really understood why so many people thought that height for its own sake was important. But it would have been naive not to take note of the widespread extraordinary assumption that the mind and heart could be measured by tallness. The little man with the big emotion was a stock comic figure. It was utterly irrational. What difference did three or four inches of leg bone make to a man's essential nature?
Chosen by members of the reading group in the late 1990s. From Odds Against by Dick Francis.
The group read it
We discussed Odds Against on March 24, 1997 and again during our "Month of Sid," December 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.