Iced

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Moving across dual timelines we learn about Miles earlier life, his family and career as a jockey and what happened for it to go disastrously wrong.

The aspects of PTSD, depressive psychosis and mental health issues discussed were carefully used I thought but could be triggering for some, so be wary.The story bowls along nicely and Miles eventually, of course, solves the mystery and justice is dispensed. The later period, which keeps interrupting the 'training period', is set after something fairly predictable has taken place to change Pusset's career direction and move him to seek his thrills from riding down the Cresta Run in Switzerland.

The descriptions of the very disparate sports of tobogganing and horse racing on the flat ice, are well written and rich in small details. But after the race when Miles takes the losing horse back to the stable he becomes suspicious, something doesn’t seem right. He's abandoned the entire horseracing industry to preserve his mental health but the speed and danger of racing down an icy course at high speed fills his need for adventure.These various pressures lead to nightmares, panic attacks, and an overuse of alcohol as an anesthetic. Published by Simon and Schuster on 16th September 2021, Iced is available for purchase through the links here. It's pretty obvious that Miles Pussett is suffering from PTSD and the character is a brave choice for Felix Francis, whose heroes have usually been rather more immediately capable. Miles gets pulled in to help when Dickinson's usual groom breaks an ankle and finds himself pulled into danger again. He confronts the bad guy, has worked out how he did it, and makes an elaborate plan to fix everything (they never go to lawyers or court or killing, it's always done quietly behind the scenes, "Only we have to know about this") and goes off to live happily ever after.

Finally, please keep in mind that I try to fight “star-flation” a little bit, so I don’t give many five-star reviews and four-stars from me is a solid “read this book” recommendation.

As one reviewer wrote: “ Felix Francis pulls no punches here and goes to places few would care to follow as he carefully details the trauma that surrounds a young life, magnifying the internal anguish of an apprentice jockey fighting not only a battle with the scales but also the terrifying memories of his father’s tragic death. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Moritz race a racehorse trainer, formerly his boss, approaches him for help when his groom breaks his foot and Jerry Dickinson needs assistance with his horses. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. More than a mystery, at least for the first third of the book, it was more the character study of a disintegrating man.

People in the story kept saying, "You're a disgrace, I'm glad your father is not here to see you" "You'll never be the jockey your father was" and so on. I wish they could have at least given him a backstory on his money woes, instead of he lived the jet set lifestyle. The story is a little hard to follow in that it shifts in time from his steeplechase time seven years ago to the present, focusing on events that shaped (and continue to shape) the person he's become.Now he gets his adrenalin rush from riding down the Cresta Run, a three-quarter-mile Swiss ice chute, head first, reaching speeds of up to eighty miles per hour. That leads to Miles’ discovery that Jerry is probably fixing races and maybe was when Miles was his jockey. Maybe it was the off-putting writing style which was more concerned about diligently describing ever grandstand or piece of turf that was being raced on.