No Reserve: A Dick Francis Novel

“No Reserve is set in the highly charged and high-worth world of thoroughbred bloodstock sales where vast sums can be spent on untried, untested, and as-yet-unnamed yearling horses. Fortunes can be made quickly, but also lost just as quickly. It felt like it was time to revisit this crucial aspect of horse racing. As the book opens, Theo is selling a colt in the Newmarket sales ring for three-million guineas. But he soon discovers that all is not right with the sale, and the following day the horse is found dead.

 

For the research for No Reserve, I spent time at the bloodstock sales at Tattersalls in Newmarket. I went there on four or five separate days, where I spoke with auctioneers, vets, bloodstock agents, racehorse trainers, and anyone else I could collar. I watched horses being vetted, sold, blood-tested, and wind-tested.

 

The idea of insurance fraud came from other research, not least from reading the true story of insurance fraud in the US where, during the 1970s and 80s, many valuable show-jumping horses were killed for insurance pay-outs.”

 

The headquarters of Coolmore, the largest and most successful horse breeding organisation in the world, is located in Fethard, County Tipperary in south central Ireland. But there are also many highly successful horse farms all over that country. Ireland is renowned for developing good horses. Never too hot nor too cold due to the Gulf Stream, with plentiful rainfall from the Atlantic weather systems, together with a base of limestone, Ireland provides the perfect conditions for growing calcium-rich grass, vital for the development of strong equine bones. There are over 200 stallions standing at stud in Ireland (including 8 of the top 10 in Europe), and Ireland accounts for some 35% of all thoroughbred foals born each year in the whole of Europe. Worldwide, it ranks 4^th, behind only the US, Australia and Argentina.