RIP Dick Francis

Dick Francis

October 31, 1920 – February 14, 2010

On the back page of my reading journal, I have a list of all of Dick Francis' novels so I can check them off as I read them (and re-read them). His mysteries, primarily centered around the world of steeplechase racing, transported me from small town Pennsylvania to the green countryside of England. He taught me the ins-and-outs of British social idiosyncracies and showed me how to put together a compelling mystery plot. And along the way, he made me wish desperately I wasn't allergic to horses so I could be trackside at a steeplechase race.

Dick Francis novels follow a predictable, awesome formula that I love: there's a hero you admire, a pretty girl with moxie, and some nasty men doing very bad things. The hero thwarts them, possibly wooing the pretty girl or having his heart broken. The books are page-turners; I always have the sensation of not being able to read them fast enough to satisfy my curiosity about what's next. The story arcs are always satisfying, and each story is packed with essential details that replace the real world with the horse stables and thugs in my imagination.

Francis was a successful jockey before he became one of the world's most successful authors, so I doubly admire him – for his athleticism and for his writing which brought me so much joy and him so much acclaim. He's written a new book every year since 1962. For someone like me, struggling under the almost all-consuming fear of STARTING a novel, that is truly inspirational and amazing.

From The New York Times (The entire obit is worth reading.):
Typically, the Dick Francis hero is a modest, decent fellow, a model of British valor and integrity, who restores order by asserting his superior moral values — and by going mano a mano with a ruthless villain who subjects him to unspeakable torture.

Those livid passages are as much a hallmark of Mr. Francis’s thrillers as his more celebrated horse races. Although he once said that the extreme violence in his books was a reflection of "life in general," it was more likely a sense-memory of his own painful injuries. His collarbone was broken 12 times, his nose five times, his skull once, his wrist once, and his ribs too many times to notice. He rode 12 races (winning two) with a broken arm.

I have about a dozen "favorites." Sid Halley is the hero of four Dick Francis novels and is among my top Francis detectives. I also adore the book The Edge, which is set in the Canadian Rockies and features a real murder during the course of a Murder Mystery dinner party aboard the train.

Over the last few years, Dick Francis has been collaborating with his son Felix; it's lovely to think that Felix will continue the family business. "It is an honor for me to be able to continue his remarkable legacy," Felix Francis said in a statement. Felix Francis said he and his brother, Merrick, were devastated but "rejoice in having been the sons of such an extraordinary man."