Book Review: Odds Against

[osprey_archer]

A couple weeks ago, thisbluespirit posted a link to Odds Abridged, an abridged retelling of Dick Francis’s Odds Against. Now, I haven’t read Odds Against, but I have read other Dick Francis, so I knew to expect a stoic and omni-competent hero in a mystery involving horses, which is all you really need to know to read this hilarious fic.

It is not true that jockeys don't feel pain. We do. We just don't talk about it, even when our skeletons are torn out; we don't feel the pain until people say something hurtful like "why aren't there any horses," and then we have to take all of that toughness and try not to break down and sob, because we are bastards and bastards don't cry, because if bastards start crying even a little bit then they just end up laying on the floor drinking their full bodyweight in brandy, empty, pitied; not having any horses at all, the horseless men of the horseless world.

Instead I said, "because when I put the menaces on people it works strangely well, because I'm so much smaller than them, and it makes them go, oh, look, he's so little and menacing, Gladys, give him a biscuit."

Then I thought about it some more and added, "And then I keep the biscuit."

After cackling my way through the abridged version, I decided I owed it to myself to read the original Odds Against as well.

WHAT a book. This is the first Francis book featuring Sid Halley, the only Francis hero to actually get a series, presumably because Francis realized that Halley suffered too beautifully to be confined to one book.

Sid is the IRONEST of woobies. At the beginning of the book, he’s just been shot in the gut, and also his left hand is basically a deformed claw as a result of a riding accident two years ago, which ended his jockey career and therefore destroyed all his interest in life. He has spent those two years in a drifting depression riding a desk in a private investigator’s office.

After the gunshot wound, Sid goes to his father-in-law’s to recuperate! (Sid’s wife has left him, but no matter, his father-in-law isn’t going to lose a good chess player just because he’s not technically part of the family anymore.) His father-in-law has a little puzzle he would like Sid to solve! Said little puzzle involves introducing Sid to a bunch of houseguests as his useless wastrel son-in-law, without warning Sid beforehand, so Sid’s just sitting at the dinner table expecting a nice dinner (or at least a usually polite dinner; he can’t eat much because of the gunshot wound to the stomach) when his father-in-law is all “And this is Sid, my daughter’s worthless ex-husband who just won’t leave my house.”

Father-in-law drops by to explain that his plan is to make the evil houseguests underestimate Sid, hence introducing him as the most useless man alive, and presumably he couldn’t warn Sid beforehand because Sid wouldn’t look sufficiently pained about it if he knew it was coming.

Later on two of the houseguests hold him down while they drag his deformed hand out of his pocket to have a look at it. (“He’s squirming!” the lady houseguest chirps.) This is just how Sid’s life goes in this book.

I realize that IRON WOOBIE SUFFERS STOICALLY AND AT GREAT LENGTH is not everyone’s thing, but if it is YOUR thing, then do yourself a solid and read this book.

Comments

[philomytha]

I really must reread this, I last read it decades ago and I remember that I enjoyed it but nothing else about it. Iron woobie being whumped is always a classic!

[osprey_archer]

He's just SO whumpable. I want to read the rest of the series (it's just three more books), but can Francis keep the whump quotient at the same shockingly high level? It seems impossible, but MAYBE.

[thisbluespirit]

Ha, I'm glad you liked the fic - it was so funny - and that it led you to the book!

This is the first Francis book featuring Sid Halley, the only Francis hero to actually get a series, presumably because Francis realized that Halley suffered too beautifully to be confined to one book.

I actually know why that happened, weirdly, because it's the same reason I wound up reading the series - ITV made a series based on Odds Against in the late 70s, called The Racing Game, starring Mike Gwilym as Sid and my fave Dead Actor Blorbo, James Maxwell, as Charles. Dick Francis apparently loved it so much, and Mike Gwilym in particular, that he wrote Whip Hand (which is dedicated to Mike Gwilym & the series producer) & he eventually followed that up with a couple more. I found out about this when someone linked me to book-fic with Charles, and I was just: ??? but this is pitch perfect JM, how did they do that without knowing? And the answer is that DF kept the casting for the books - he also tried to sand the novels into line with the TV series in Whip Hand, so it kind of follows on more from the TV version of OA than it does the original, and therefore Dick Francis and I do have one thing in common: we have both committed James Maxwell fanfic, lol. (I read Odds Against last and was startled by it having differences to the TV adaptation and the rest of the series.)

Anyway, Whip Hand has the most Sid/Charles and is therefore my favourite, and Come To Grief was also good, while the last one was much later and not so good, but it did contain one priceless moment when Sid takes his new fiancee home to meet Charles and then gets jealous that they get on so well, because Charles is HIS OMG.

[ursula]

Thank you for this important information!

[osprey_archer]

I felt that the world needed to know!

[osprey_archer]

Oh this is fascinating! Thank you so much for this background information! Perhaps I will see if I can watch The Racing Game... Yes it looks like the local library has the DVDs. Now I just need to get a working DVD player!

This works out very well really, I have become curious to watch something with James Maxwell, and what better than a Dick Francis adaptation that inspired Dick Francis to write more books about the characters? Clearly once I've sorted the DVD player situation, I'll watch The Racing Game and then read Whip Hand and report back on the Sid/Charles of it all.

[cyphomandra]

omg I love Sid and I have just read that fic and cackled gleefully the entire way through. My favourite in the series is Come to Grief, I haven’t been able to read the one after that because it’s after Mary died (Dick’s wife and cowriter) and the writing plunged in quality massively, but one day my desire for more Sid (nearly wrote more Dick but decided against it :D ) will overcome me.

[osprey_archer]

I may end up treating the Sid Halley quartet as a trilogy because everyone seems to agree that the fourth one is Not As Good. That still leaves me with two more books of delicious Sid Halley whump!

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, good luck with that! I'm not sure how I feel about The Racing Game, but obv appreciated the Sid & Charles bits (Charles is only in the first 2 episodes). I think one of the eps did at least have Caroline Blakiston in, which is always a plus. (aka Mon Mothma in Star Wars.)

Anyway, this is Mike Gwilym as the Dick Francis-approved Sid, and this is Sid and Charles.

This works out very well really, I have become curious to watch something with James Maxwell,

I mean, I love him, but he is just my extremely random old telly actor blorbo; I have no explanation for myself, really, and I wouldn't expect anyone else to be particularly into him. He just made me happy when I was very ill and not able to do modern TV at all.

[osprey_archer]

Thank you for the gifsets! I do kind of get the vibe that Charles is crushing on an oblivious Sid, which is exactly as it should be.

[sholio]

Technically I think there are six. The later ones are definitely inferior to the earlier ones (and have some questionable writing decisions made about their main female character) but I feel like the fifth one is entirely worth it for a sequence in which Charles gets very gratifyingly whumped for a change. (I wrote about it here - contains fairly large spoilers.) I think it's nowhere near equal to Francis at his best, but I've definitely read books by actual Dick Francis that were worse.

[marginaliana]

That fic was SO delightful - I can't tell if it makes me want to read the book or if I just want it to live in my mind as is forever.

[rachelmanija]

That dinner scene is such an amazing piece of writing.

[osprey_archer]

Honestly I had the same struggle after I read the fic. I enjoyed the book too, though! Deranged in some entirely different directions than the fic!

[osprey_archer]

Charles just sics them on Sid! And Sid is like oh god what is happening but also rolls with it.

[asakiyume]

I think I'm not made of stern enough stuff to take actual Odds Against but the snippet from the parody fic is great! ("The horseless men of the horseless world" --that's both funny and has a tinge of inspirationalness to it: great.)

[osprey_archer]

Charles DOES need to get whumped, it's so true. A solid decision!

[osprey_archer]

I think you might enjoy the parody fic, but the book as a whole is perhaps too violent for you.

[troisoiseaux]

I ended up reading both Odds Against and the "abridged" fic because of your review! The actual book was entertainingly what it was - having now read two (2) Dick Francis books, I am amused by his apparent quirk of going on super-detailed digressions about, like, corporate takeover law and how boilers work that you just kind of have to ride out until he gets back to the story (I think it was, like... probate law and bomb-making in the other one I read?) - but I was, as the kids say, hooting and hollering throughout the fic. So many good lines, but the one that really got me was: where we derailed the bad-guy-capture scene to weigh me on the jockey scales, because we were all united in fucking curiosity at that point.

[osprey_archer]

YES WONDERFUL I have done my good deed for this week.

Dick Francis loves a hyper-detailed digression even more than he loves whumping a stoic woobie. Maybe he read Les Miserables at an impressionable age.

The fic is SUCH a delight, and I had so much fun when I was reading the book coming up on the scenes that I knew must be coming in some form (although sometimes a bit metamorphosed from their fic counterpart). The bit where they put Sid on the jockey scales and Sid, who is about to be tortured and maybe killed, notices that he could definitely still weigh in as a steeplechase jockey! SID HOW YOU ARE YOU NOTICING THAT IN THIS MOMENT.