A review of Taking the Fall by A.P.McCoy –

As indicated by the headline, there is too much sex and not enough gripping storytelling.  I was left feeling greatly underwhelmed sadly.

So, what is the book about then and who are the protagonists? It centres on the life of a young cocky jockey called Duncan Claymore. He has just graduated from being a leading Apprentice. People think he has the skills to be a future great, but his mouth keeps getting him into trouble.

Duncan’s direct assessment of his rides leads him to often irritate and offend trainers and owners alike. To get around this problem, he ends up employing the hopeless and occasionally comical Jockey Agent, Mike Ruddy.  The plot takes the form of a revenge mission for Duncan.

His dad Charlie was once a trainer and on the cusp of greatness, when he was subjected to a set-up involving three people(a trainer, a owner and a jockey). Worried that Charlie will harm their successes, this trio conspired to have him found guilty of doping a horse. Charlie thus gets banned from training, and so his budding racing enterprise ends with Duncan believing that all this upset has accelerated the onset of his father’s dementia.

Duncan sets out on trying to make these people pay for what they did, before his father’s dementia becomes too much for him to understand it all. Added with this is whether or not Duncan will join the dark side and become complicit in helping fix races for illegal betting rings. In theory this sounds like a rather dark, gripping, compulsive thriller as noted in the overleaf. In reality, it is a relatively poorly written book and was not gripping whatsoever.

Firstly, I have an issue with the conclusion/ending. Unless McCoy tends to write a sequel, it ends with only one of the people responsible for his father’s set-up getting their comeuppance. Therefore, we do not get the much desired narrative resolution by the end. It could have least been another hundred pages long and achieved this. The minimal narrative tension that is built up towards the end is unsatisfactory dealt with, i.e. too quickly dealt with.

Secondly, the sex scenes or depiction of them rather, were way over-the-top and too explicit.  There are lots of novels where love making is sensually told, a moving experience to read about.

McCoy instead is verging on the flippant regarding sex, and how his character meaninglessly engages in it.  Duncan is obviously a womaniser, but the explicitness of the scenes do not add anything to the overall narrative, rather they just cheapen it.

Apart from having sex with the wife of a jockey who he hates, the bed hopping is more of a distraction to the main drive of the plot. At times, it felt like this endless sex was there just to fill up the word count.

There are also a few issues with the dementia that the author details Duncan’s father Charlie from having. He details how one minute Charlie is having a bad spell and does not know what is happening, to then him apologising for getting mixed up and being coherent once more. With my late Grandma’s severe dementia there were no good or bad spells which could be self checked.

On a positive note however, the actual horse racing parts were enjoyable to read. Particularly interesting was when Duncan corrected a horse in training. Up too this point the horse kept planting it’s feet at a fence and so throwing the jockey overboard.  It was interesting to read how this problem was corrected.

From the outset, the promise of a vengeful jockey not stopping til revenge had been exacted, appeared like an exciting read. However as just discussed, this revenge ends in a bit of a damp squib and was a bit of a disappointment.

Admittedly, this is a debut novel, but ultimately it did not live up to the high expectations prior to reading. If this book was runner in this year’s Grand National then I would predict that after a bright start, I could see it falling at Becher’s Brook. 2/5