SOURCE: "Dick Francis' Latest a Good Bet," in Chicago Tribune Books, March 6, 1988, p. 6.

In the following review, Busch describes Francis's Hot Money as a thriller with enough suspense to keep the reader interested.

"Hot Money," Ian Pembroke explains to his father, consists of "bets made by people in the know. People with inside information." Ian, a horse trainer and amateur jockey, is bodyguarding millionaire Dad, Malcolm—all over their native England, and in parts of Australia and America—because someone is trying to kill the irascible man who by Ian and outrageous to his seven other surviving children and their four surviving mothers, Malcolm's ex-wives.

His fifth has been murdered as the novel opens. It's a fine beginning, in Ian's voice: "I intensely disliked my father's fifth wife, but not to the point of murder." Father and son, estranged for years, become reconciled—become friends—as Ian labors...