This book doesn't have the "on your chair" excitement, but it is well written and keeps you wanting to continue reading. For over forty years, the London University grad helped father Dick Francis (31 Oct 1920 – 14 Feb 2010), ex-jockey known for horse-racing mysteries.

Add to that the adrenalin-producing excitement of the Cresta Run, and the novel has all the ingredients for an action-packed rollercoaster ride of emotion and skulduggery. His father, killed in a car crash when Miles was 12, was a champion jockey and Miles had too much to live up to. Since then Miles has endured flashbacks and feelings of guilt because he survived the accident which killed his father. Some of the grief that Miles had never really dealt with, as it seemed he never had anyone close he could talk to. It doesn't help that, as a jockey, he faces a lot of other stresses ranging from the obsessive need to lose weight to remain eligible to race and the pressure put on him to win races and the public's written and spoken pressure when he doesn't win.You cannot help comparing Felix Francis' work to that of his father, especially when his narrative features racing and even at one point mentions 'Dick Francis'. He seems to have his life together and we wonder about those intervening years between his younger life that was falling apart to this older life when he seems to have it together. Still Miles pursues his career as a steeplechase jockey, becoming a professional two months short of his 18th birthday. I, sadly, am not… I confess I speed read the pages crammed full of descriptions of individual British courses, and of the mechanics of individual races in which Miles rode. Mortiz with protagonist Miles drawn back into the equestrian world he had walked away from years earlier.

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.Surprisingly, even the constant changes from past to present, that I normally find really confusing, were very well written. This has replaced his earlier thrill-seeking as a steeplechase jockey – a career he gave up (or a career that gave him up) 7 years ago. It is well written, which I would expect from Felix Francis, and, perhaps, it is his break away from his father’s style of book from which, I thought, he has been moving away successfully. These pressures seem only to be kept at bay by the bottle, but Miles doesn't realize he's an alcoholic, despite misjudgments and a series of increasingly serious accidents. In the tradition of Clive Cussler and James Lee Burke, Iced, the latest in Francis’s fictional world, is a heart-pounding thriller that will keep you racing to the next page.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Having been putting the finishing touches to one of my own books on men's mental health and suicide awareness, this book hit home harder than any other crime thriller I have read, because I know what is written in here is reality - which always makes the best fiction. Miles followed in his father's footsteps as a steeplechase jockey, but due to circumstances mostly beyond his control - including unfavorable comparisons to his late father - he quit. At times it is an uncomfortable read: we identify all too easily with the young hero, but are powerless to influence the damaging choices he makes, choices that leave him exposed and vulnerable. We do get to see the thrills and dangers of riding racehorses - and the disappointment of owners and trainers when they lose.At Cresta, the luging event, he runs into his old trainer Jerry who asks for help dressing two horses for the ice racing the next day.

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. It seemed as he flew down the ice chute that he was close to a death wish, and his lack of enthusiasm for anything else was depressing. I do agree that Miles didn't seem to be very likeable or very mature, as other reviewers have noted, but that may have been necessary for the plot and the underlying message. Now he gets his adrenaline 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. I’m so disappointed that I didn’t have time to read Iced by Felix Francis in time for this blog tour, but am thrilled that Felix has agreed to stay in with me to chat all about it today.To read a book about men's mental health written in such a way, highlighting the pressures of the racing world, is not only needed, but absolutely necessary. It is interesting, particularly when looking at the news and seeing people in the public eye facing similar problems. And that continued right to the end, after which I shut down my Kindle and said to myself, "Self, that was very well written and a darned good story. This was truly a half-ass effort by the author, Felix Francis, who poorly depicted horse racing, luge and alcoholism.