Newspaper Nest
At the Start
Hi, I'm Jon Franklin, former Hills manager and racecourse photographer. Noticing the Chit-Chat forum and a few posts from members about books, I thought this might be the place to bring up the subject of horse racing fiction books.
Years ago, the late Dick Francis made this genre his own, defined it you could say - and his son Felix has kept his father's signature murder mystery 'whodunnit' genre alive into the present day. Joe McNally expanded this genre with his excellent Eddie Malloy Series of books, originally in partnership with Richard Pitman.
Coming from a betting shop background, just like Joe, I quickly became intrigued by the world of betting shops - betting shops as they were, I should say, back in the nineties, crucially during the days before the advent of the world-wide-web. Remember those days? This was a time when unless you were going to the races, the only place you could put on a bet was at your local bookies. Betting shops were intriguing places back in those days - as common on the average British high street as the chemists, the supermarket and the pub and yet - unless you were one of the 'converted', they were considered by the wider public as stigmatised places full of
petty criminals, work dodgers and compulsive gamblers.
My years managing Hills shops in the London area and later in the east Midlands made me realise that this prejudice towards betting shop punters wasn't entirely fair. It also occurred to me that the average high street betting shop in the UK at that time would be a very interesting place to write about.
In 2021, I published my debut novel Shouting The Odds. In my own small way, I felt that it widened the horse racing fiction genre to include a previously ignored point of view - that of the average high street punter - the 'life-blood' of British racing itself. Shouting The Odds was received very well, the subject of positive reviews in the Racing Post and Sporting Life. To this day however, I am still discovering readers who have not yet come across it - mainly because my 'reach' as an indie author is limited, without a large publishing house pushing it towards the top end of the Amazon horse racing fiction reader lists.
Joe McNally has since become a firm ally of mine and advocate of my books. He couldn't have been more supportive. So for less than the price of a dual-forcast bet (for the kindle version), why not give Shouting The Odds a read? If nothing else, it will return you for a few hours to the 'hey-day' of betting shops in their prime, as they were throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland - the heartlands of the 'ordinary punter' now, sadly, unrecognisable to the places that they have largely become today.
Shouting The Odds and Manvers Road Star can be bought on-line via Amazon UK. They can also be ordered in store at all branches of Waterstones, Foyles and Blackwell book shops.
Years ago, the late Dick Francis made this genre his own, defined it you could say - and his son Felix has kept his father's signature murder mystery 'whodunnit' genre alive into the present day. Joe McNally expanded this genre with his excellent Eddie Malloy Series of books, originally in partnership with Richard Pitman.
Coming from a betting shop background, just like Joe, I quickly became intrigued by the world of betting shops - betting shops as they were, I should say, back in the nineties, crucially during the days before the advent of the world-wide-web. Remember those days? This was a time when unless you were going to the races, the only place you could put on a bet was at your local bookies. Betting shops were intriguing places back in those days - as common on the average British high street as the chemists, the supermarket and the pub and yet - unless you were one of the 'converted', they were considered by the wider public as stigmatised places full of
petty criminals, work dodgers and compulsive gamblers.
My years managing Hills shops in the London area and later in the east Midlands made me realise that this prejudice towards betting shop punters wasn't entirely fair. It also occurred to me that the average high street betting shop in the UK at that time would be a very interesting place to write about.
In 2021, I published my debut novel Shouting The Odds. In my own small way, I felt that it widened the horse racing fiction genre to include a previously ignored point of view - that of the average high street punter - the 'life-blood' of British racing itself. Shouting The Odds was received very well, the subject of positive reviews in the Racing Post and Sporting Life. To this day however, I am still discovering readers who have not yet come across it - mainly because my 'reach' as an indie author is limited, without a large publishing house pushing it towards the top end of the Amazon horse racing fiction reader lists.
Joe McNally has since become a firm ally of mine and advocate of my books. He couldn't have been more supportive. So for less than the price of a dual-forcast bet (for the kindle version), why not give Shouting The Odds a read? If nothing else, it will return you for a few hours to the 'hey-day' of betting shops in their prime, as they were throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland - the heartlands of the 'ordinary punter' now, sadly, unrecognisable to the places that they have largely become today.
Shouting The Odds and Manvers Road Star can be bought on-line via Amazon UK. They can also be ordered in store at all branches of Waterstones, Foyles and Blackwell book shops.
