Knockdown
Harper, 1974
Characters
- Jonah Dereham
- 34, ex-jockey, honest bloodstock agent
- Kerry Sanders
- 40, rich American lady, engaged to Constantine Brevett
- Jiminy Bell
- one-time steeplechase jockey, currently drifting around horse places hoping for handouts
- Pauli Teksa
- American bloodstock agent
- Nicol Brevett
- amateur jockey
- Constantine Brevett
- Nicole's dad, engaged to Kerry Sanders
- Ronnie North
- bloodstock agent
- Crispin Dereham
- 35, Jonah's brother
- Sophie Randolph
- 32, air-traffic controller
- Antonia Huntercombe
- Sophie's aunt, owns and runs a stud farm
- Fred Smith
- Frizzy Hair
- Clem
- horse box driver
- Wilton Young
- Constantine's rival
- Vic Vincent
- Constantine's bloodstock agent
- Eddy Ingram
- one of Jonah's clients
- Fynedale
- Yorkeshireman, Wilton Young's bloodstock agent
- Peter & Sue
- Sophie's friends
Favorite passages
Hawleyliz chose two favorite quotes from Knockdown. She says that as a person who always seems to be searching for inner peace, these quotes spoke to her:
Hey-ho for a quiet life in the country.
Quiet is internal.
Found by Nhise53 in Knockdown: When Jonah goes to see Sophie's Aunt Antonia, he observes that
Only the Mrs. Huntercrombies who wouldn't play ball were coming to grief .
Also, when he's talking to Kerry Sanders about River God and she's wanting to find out who Frizzy Hair and the other man are who took Hearse Puller, Jonah recommends the Radnor Halley Agency. Shades of Sid! Favorite quote is about Mrs. Antonia Huntercombe:
She was a woman of about sixty, with strong facial bones and an air of first-class stoicism in the face of titanic submersion.
Chosen by members of the reading group in the late 1990s. From Knockdown by Dick Francis.
The group read it
We discussed Knockdown on July 28, 1997.
This page was first written for the reading group's original site in the late 1990s and was lost when AOL Hometown closed. It has been recovered from the Internet Archive.