Dick Francis was a famous jockey; then he became a famous mystery writer; now he wants to be part of a famous father and son mystery-writing team. Dead Heat is the first Dick Francis thriller to be centered on Max Moreton, a somewhat celebrated chef.

Max is having a bad go of it. His ego is bruised by a mass food-poisoning incident. Then he lives through a bombing the next day. One of his erstwhile victims decides to sue. Max begins to question how he, a chef with a Michelin star (and an ego to match) could possibly have poisoned patrons. Things soon turn really bad for Max.

Finally, after several overt threats on his life, Max is finally scared into action, and begins to run around the world to unravel the mystery of how his food poisoning and the bombing at the racetrack are connected. And this is when the book finally starts to feel like a normal Dick Francis mystery – intrigue and murder at the racetrack.

There is nothing wrong with this book – it’s a lot of fun to read, and learning about the restaurant business is pretty interesting. But this isn’t necessarily the Dick Francis that people are used to – there aren’t many twists and turns, and the love story progresses awfully quickly, even by mystery standards. But if you picked up the book knowing nothing at all about Francis and just looking for a good read, then you would not be disappointed. After all, how many egomaniacal chefs could really bring down an international crime syndicate?