Lost in a book

Okay, I confess. I didn’t blog last night because I was lost in a book and desperate to finish it. No, it wasn’t one of my own, though I sincerely wish I could tell you it was my current work-in-progress. No such luck—I’m only halfway through that one.

I was nearing the end of a Dick Francis horse-racing mystery, Wild Horses (2008). I’m a huge Dick Francis fan, though I’m puzzled to know why. His mysteries are all set in England’s racing country and feature characters who are either in the midst of the racing world or on the fringes. Many of his protagonists, always male, have grown up in racing but gone on to other careers—a film director, a chef, a journalist, etc. His most frequent protagonist, however, is Sid Halley, a former jockey.

I am not particularly intrigued with English mysteries, including those by Agatha Christie  who all cozy writers are supposed to recognize as the source of our genre. Shh—don’t tell on me. I usually like mysteries with female protagonists, and I am not at all drawn to the racing world. The only time I went to a horse race I nearly divorced my then-husband because he wagered all that money we didn’t have (and that was on the honeymoon! No wonder the marriage didn’t last.).

The only exception to my non-English criterion, besides Francis, is Deborah Crombie. But Deborah’s a born-and-bred-in-Texas girl who has been fascinated with England all her life and takes frequent research trips there. The result is that her series, about man-and-wife Scotland Yard officers, rings with authenticity. Note that she breaks a major unwritten rule right there—her characters are married!

Back to Francis, my mentor/friend Fred, who is also a great Francis fan, suggested my fascination is with the characters Francis writes about, but I can’t quite buy that. They are not people I would know or be drawn to in real life.

I think Francis has a way of drawing the reader into the mind of the narrator/protagonist, and his use of language is both clever and solid. In Wild Horses, which Fred claims is one of his favorites, the protagonist is a movie producer, filming about a young horse trainer’s wife who committed suicide by hanging thirty years earlier—or did she? The more he’s drawn into the story and meets the real-life characters, the more he doubts that suicide theory. An associated subplot, involving a man he knew as a child, leads him to pursue his doubts to a surprising conclusion.

Francis’ climactic scenes are often frighteningly real and grisly. The hero sometimes suffers unbelievable physical danger and harm, but this one was, to me, less of a nail-biter. Yet I finished the book, late last night, with a sense of satisfaction with the ending. All loose ends had been accounted for.

Dick Francis, himself once a jockey, died in 2010. In his last years, his son Felix, formerly his manager, became his co-author and maintained the quality of the books. Francis’ canon consists of over forty novels. If you haven’t read one yet, hurry online or to a bookstore or library and prepare yourself for absorbing reading. One of my prized possessions is a signed hardback. Francis used to winter in the Caymans, and when my son Colin lived there, he got the autographed book for me.