“The bad scorn the good and the crooked despise the straight.”
Straight, by Dick Francis
I read my first Dick Francis novel in 1976. It was In the Frame, and as soon as I finished it, I ran to the bookstore to find anything else by him. There were 11 at the time, starting with Dead Cert. I finished them off in one two-week orgy and I knew that, from then on, I would never miss a Dick Francis novel.
From the first book, I loved Francis's elegant prose style. Whether it was his writing or his wife Mary's editing, there were no clunky paragraphs, wasted words or deadly adjectival fillers in his novels. The prose was always clean, clear and moved the story along. If violence was necessary, there was no lingering on the gory details, although Francis's descriptions of jockey's injuries were enough to convince me that the pain was real. As for the dialogue, essential to a good mystery, whether it was spoken by British aristocracy or stable boys, it was note-perfect.
I also loved Francis's fractured jockeys, whom he turned into genuine British heroes. For one who cut her teeth on H. Rider Haggard, Christmas (Kit) Fielding and Sid Halley were everything a fiction fan could want: intelligent, courageous, highly principled and always exquisitely mannered.
These were the elements that, to Francis, made a great jockey, but they also took his stories anywhere from South Africa to Canada in search of a murderer or thief. I always wanted characters such as horse portraitist Charles Todd to return, but Francis kept me searching. He did bring back Sid Halley a couple of times, and Kit Fielding once, but usually there were new people for new plots in new places.
All my favourite Francis novels were ones where he introduced me to something completely new. He took me right into the stands when he did a racing plot, and when he put his hero on a horse, I could feel the wind racing round my ears.
But Francis put his ex-jockeys into stories far beyond the racecourse. The art world of In the Frame was about horse portraiture and the netherworld of high-art forgery and theft. Other novels, to mention only a few, dealt with horse transport, wine imports, banking, gold arbitrage and semi-precious stones. The research, often done by Mary, was always impeccable, and Francis knew exactly how much to tell the reader to keep the plot moving and to not get bogged down in petty details.
Every Francis fan has a favourite book. Mine is Straight, set in the trade in semi-precious stones. The hero is a jockey named Derek Franklin. It has some of Francis's best writing, beginning with, “I inherited my brother's desk, his business, his gadgets, his enemies, his horses and his mistress. I inherited my brother's life, and it nearly killed me.”
I don't remember many lines from the hundreds, or thousands, of mysteries I've read, but that novel, and the complex characters in it – particularly the dead brother, Gervaise, who adored electronic gadgets – has stayed with me. It was compelling, leading me into a story I couldn't possibly stop reading. That was Dick Francis to me: straight, beginning to end.
