Damn. This one hurt.
As is often the case when I’m doing brain-dead chores, I
was listening to a book while wrangling a load of laundry Sunday
afternoon. In this case a “Books on Tape” production of Dead
Heat, one of the best of Dick Francis’s recent works. I’d
read and enjoyed the 2007 novel before, but Martin Jarvis’s agile
reading of it adds a dimension.
It was with great sadness that after putting the CDs aside,
laundry done, I went on-line and learned that Francis had died on
Saturday at his home in the Cayman Islands. One can hardly be
surprised when someone 89 goes on. But it’s still very bad news
and a huge loss to the untold number of Dick Francis fans on both
sides of the Atlantic, me included, that he will no longer be
writing the taut crime thrillers we’ve come to enjoy over the
decades. Happily, Francis’s publishers, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, have
one more completed novel, Crossfire, a publication date
for which has not been announced.
Those who know the name but haven’t had the pleasure may
think of Francis as “the horse writer.” Born in Wales to a horse
trainer, Francis said he can’t remember when he didn’t ride, but
admits in his autobiography that his first ride at about age five
was on a donkey.
Before turning to fiction writing in his forties, Francis
had flown RAF bombers in combat in WWII and then become a
championship steeple-chase jockey, often riding the Queen Mum’s
horses and coming within a whisker of winning the Grand National
in 1956. His novels aren’t horse-stories anymore than
Hamlet is a ghost-story. But all of his 42 crime novels
have something to do with the world of British horse racing, a
world Francis knew intimately, and could portray deftly, warts
and all.
The attraction to Francis for conservative TAS
readers — other than the pleasure of intelligently written
stories in lean, clear, insistent prose — is his conservative
protagonists. Francis doesn’t use the word, his novels are
apolitical with politicians getting hardly a mention at all. But
we’re probably justified in describing his heroes thus.
Francis does not have a series character. His heroes have
different names and are involved in a wide range of occupations.
But they’re all young, mostly in their thirties, physically and
mentally tough, courageous but not foolhardy, intelligent,
resourceful, self-disciplined, self-reliant, civil, and
thoroughly decent. They exemplify the manly virtues without
swaggering about it. Not a metro-sexual in the bunch. Not a
braggadocio either. No sense of entitlement.
Francis’s bad guys subject his heroes to all manner of
physical and mental torment, which the good guys bear with
stoicism and overcome, along with the bad guys, by their wits and
courage. It’s good versus evil in a Francis story, and it doesn’t
take a philosophy major or a bioethicist to figure out which is
which. Francis’s stories ring with intelligence and strength.
They’re full of affirmation of life without anyone having to say,
“Would you like to talk about it?”
It’s no surprise that Francis’s heroes can and do take
physical punishment. They’re like their creator in this regard.
In his racing days Francis says he had his skull fractured once,
one or the other collar bones broken six times (he was married
with his collar bone in a brace), and his nose broken five times.
As for broken ribs, he said he quit counting after a while. But
like his heroes, Francis never complained about the constant
injuries that are the jockey’s lot. He said that compared to
Germans shooting at him while he attempted to drop bombs on them,
racing was a piece of cake. A pretty tough cake, but that’s how
he saw it.
After one fall too many Francis retired from racing in 1957
to become a racing writer for the Sunday Express. It was
just a step, though a large one, from racing journalist to
writing novels based on the racing world. His first novel,
Dead Cert, hit bookstores in 1962. Since then his books
have sold more than six million copies and have been translated
into 20 languages.
Francis’s novels are found in the mystery section of
bookstores. But his deft handling of theme, character, and place
make his work more than genre fare. His work has the
I’ve-just-got-to-turn-the-page-to-see-what-happens insistence of
the good thriller, along with the depth of the well-done
mainstream novel.
Thanks to thorough research done, first by Francis’s wife
Mary who died in 2000, later by number two son Felix, readers get
a look at various worlds, including — the law in Silks,
the diplomatic corps and veterinary medicine in
Comeback, movie-making in Wild
Horses, cooking and the gourmet restaurant
business in Dead Heat, glassblowing in
Shattered, flying in Flying Finish, photography
in Reflex, et al.
Over the last three novels, Felix’s contribution has been
sufficient to lift him to the level of co-author, though the
style and stories of the last three are so consistent with the
body of Francis’s work that it’s clear that Dick has been at the
wheel throughout. And the throughout has been consistently good,
with Francis winning every prize for mystery fiction there is to
win to go along with the impressive book sales.
Francis was not one of those old guys stuck in a time warp.
He kept up. His later novels show the contemporary, culturally
diminished Britain without whining about it. But his stories
treat universal themes such that 1962’s Dead Cert and
the other novels in his impressive back-list are as readable
today as when they first appeared. I recommend them
to TAS readers.
The world has lost a champion on the racetrack, in the air
in defense of freedom, and on the page in defense of
intelligence, honesty, and decency. RIP Dick Francis. Your race
is run, and you done good.
