SOURCE: A review of Decider, in The Los Angeles Times Book Review, December 19, 1993, p. 6.

In the following review, Roraback asserts that despite a slow start Francis's Decider is a good bet.

A little late out of the gate, Decider, Dick Francis' 32nd (!) novel, is still worth a show bet, maybe even a place. Francis, of course, is the former jockey whose nourishing mysteries center about the racetrack. Decider's slow start, then, can be chalked up to its leading man, builder Lee Morris, who doesn't know a bangtail from an I-beam. Naturally he learns; by Page 241 he's good and hooked on horseflesh: "No architect anywhere could have designed anything as functional, economical, superbly proportioned." But it's a way from there to here.

Morris stumbles into the milieu via seven inherited shares in a racecourse 90% owned by the Strattons, a "noble" British family that makes the Jukeses look like...