thrown into a crucial situation and living up to his secret, hopeful expectations for himself under fire.

Judith Rascoe, "On Vicarious Danger," in The Christian Science Monitor (reprinted by permission from The Christian Science Monitor; © 1969 The Christian Science Publishing Sociery; all rights reserved), July 17, 1969, p. 11.∗

Francis improves with every book as both a writer of brisk, lucid prose and as a concocter of ingenious and intricately worked-out plots. He has acquired something of Ian Fleming's easy expertise in handling technical information, though his travels in Norway and South Africa led him in recent books into unnecessarily detailed diversions. In Knock Down the information was at his finger tips and the sales ring scenes are hair-raisingly convincing. Where he has followed Fleming less satisfactorily is in the increase in goriness and the stretching of improbability. He opts for a dozen crimes where one would do; as with Simon Raven, a writer of similar skills in the building-up of suspense, his imagination takes hold at crucial moments and finally runs off with him. He has now got a good enough horse under him to ride a waiting race. Meanwhile, a course of Simenon and a pair of blinkers would not come amiss. (pp. 142-43)

Philip Pelham, "Special Notices: 'Knock Down'," in London Magazine (© London Magazine 1975), Vol. 14, No. 6, February-March, 1975, pp. 142-43.

Dick Francis holds his form like a top-class chaser and it is a joy to see him back in the field. Any novel by him beginning "Thursday March 17th" must mean Cheltenham on Gold Cup day, and lo and behold his hero, an accountant and amateur jockey, actually has a ride in the big race….

As usual aspects of [Risk] make one a little uneasy. Characterization is sometimes thin and stylized, especially the villains, out to inflict pain upon the accountant who has uncovered their villainy, crooked businessmen and trainers, all a little too well dressed, florid and unexpectedly brutal bullies, created with a faint hint of paranoia. The villainy itself is a little implausible in some respects, and Mr Francis's view of trainers may cause an eyebrow or two to go up in Upper Lambourn. As usual, too, the writer seems more at home in the weighing room than in the bedroom. Fortunately more of the action takes place in the weighing room.

One is never really aware of these weaknesses as one reads; partly because the book is superbly constructed and the hero persecuted in a way that is mystifying, frightening and beautifully described, as he undergoes three separate ordeals of close and increasingly uncomfortable confinement; and partly because the author is so good at catching incidental scenes and making them memorable—an exchange between trainer, owner and jockey in the bar at Towcester races comes to mind….

Finally the novel pleases so much because it creates and imposes its own world. Some aspects of that world may seem thinner than our own, but others are incomparably richer. Dick Francis is a master at flattering and pleasing the reader, particularly when he takes him onto a racecourse or round a trainer's yard. Indeed, he does more. He turns flattery into the supreme generosity of giving every reader a winning ride in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, on what looks like a 40-1 no-hoper.

Alex de Jonge, "Toughs of the Turf," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1977; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), No. 3944. October 28, 1977, p. 1258.

[Just as Dick Francis demonstrates] capabilities both substantial and varied, so too do we find his protagonists—who are in one form or another versions of Francis himself—to be multi-talented individuals…. Sooner or later, of course, all Francis heroes—be they jockeys or trainers or transport pilots or actors or blood-struck agents—must also of necessity become detectives.

In considering the make-up of the Francis hero it is interesting to examine Francis' attitude toward amateurism/professionalism. Clearly he has little interest in conduct or effort that might be considered "amateurish," nor in professionals who do not take their professions seriously. Just as clearly he greatly admires the true professional—the man who goes about his work with the confidence based on full knowledge of what is required and an awareness that he has the skills to attend to those demands. Francis' greatest affection, however, seems reserved for what might be called the "amateur professional"—the figure who does what he does (with all the talent and commitment of the true professional) for the love of the thing, and not for money. (p. 239)

One thing Francis heroes are not is James Bond types. To be sure, their abilities are considerable and diverse; they are extremely resourceful, always capable of rising to the crisis at hand. But at the same time they are usually—outside of their area of particular expertise, and at least on the surface—fairly ordinary people. (pp. 240-41)

Another feature of Francis heroes, particularly in more recent works, is that they have suffered wounds, either physical or psychological or both, which they must endure. Jonah Dereham (Knockdown …) has taken so many falls in his steeplechasing career that he must be bound together with webbing (a fact that the villains of the piece do not ignore). Sid Halley (Odds Against) has a hand so badly crippled that he tries to keep it concealed in his pocket. Divorce, or separation from one's spouse, figures conspicuously in Francis' novels. For the author such a condition seems to stand for the ultimate psychological pain of dislocation…. There is also in Francis' world very often the spectre of a relative whose disabilities weigh heavy upon the central protagonist….

Such are the handicaps Francis' protagonists must bear … and endure and overcome. Because those protagonists really are romantic heroes, they never whine about these things; instead they bite the bullet, and go on with the business of living—often in a kind of Heming wayesque fashion. (p. 241)

It is clear from Francis' novels that the steeplechaser's gritty commitment to the 'chase … is reflected in the shaping of his protagonists. It is interesting, for example, that at the beginning of at least three works (Odds Against, Rat Race, and Blood Sport), the protagonists are seen "nursing their bruises," having consciously taken up positions of detachment from the world about them…. Ultimately, however, the crises that inform each of these novels force them back into the fray…. (pp. 241, 243)

If one were to envision the "typical" Dick Francis novel, it would go something like this: At the outset something has happened that looks wrong (a jockey is set down by a board of enquiry that seemed predetermined to find him guilty; a horse falls going over a final hurdle it had seemed to clear; horses perfectly ready to win consistently fail to do so). The narrator-protagonist (usually not a detective, but always inherently curious) begins to poke around to try to discover what has occurred. In so doing he inevitably pokes too hard and strikes a hornets' nest. The rest of the novel then centers on a critical struggle between the searcher-after-truth and the mysterious agent of evil, whose villainy had upset things in the first place, and is now turned full-bore upon the hero….

Sooner or later [the villain] will get his shot at the hero, and when he does he can be counted on to take it as nastily as possible. The sadism of the villain's revenge is especially prominent in several of the earlier works. (p. 243)

There is not much to be gained from faulting Francis for [a tendency to tag the main villain with a hyphenated or "villainous name"], since the whole evolution of his writing has been to improve. In part that improvement has meant moving steadily beyond … stark (indeed melodramatic) confrontations of Good and Evil…. In recent years, though the plots may run along similar lines, Francis' focus has been increasingly directed at the protagonist himself, and at considering what goes into the making not so much of a "hero" as of a good man. This line … seems plainly the direction of Francis' future development as a novelist. In such works survival is still a key concept—"everyone lives on a precipice"—but it is no longer the ability/capacity to endure the villain's tortures, but rather the strength to prevail over one's own self-doubts and private fears. Surely it is not mere coincidence that as a focus of tension physical pain is being supplanted by psychological strain as Mr. Francis himself grows farther and farther away from his riding days. The result, of course, is that Dick Francis is becoming less a writer of thrillers and more a creator of literature—while remaining, as he always has been, splendidly readable. In shifting much of his emphasis from external (plot) tension to internal (psychological) stress, Mr. Francis is obviously working with more difficult materials. Not surprisingly, the transition has had some rocky moments; Blood Sport and Rat Race, for instance, are clearly flawed novels, especially in the early going, yet even they steadily build for the reader. And in For Kicks, Bonecrack, Knockdown, and High Stakes … the author has achieved everything that could be asked of him: carefully controlled suspense, sensitive and convincing characterization, fine dramatic climaxes, and three almost perfect last pages. (p. 244)

Barry Bauska, "Endure and Prevail: The Novels of Dick Francis," in The Armchair Detective (copyright © 1978 by The Armchair Detective), Vol. 11, No. 3, July, 1978, pp. 238-44.

The popular Dick Francis, who turns out a beautifully finished product year in and year out, adds to his already formidable list with "Trial Run."… Perhaps one reason for his reliability, and for his readers' delight in the product, is the fact that he discovered a dependable formula from the very beginning and has relentlessly pursued it. A Dick Francis novel, well written though it may be, is not going to have any great surprises….

In all the Francis novels, the hero has something to do with horse racing, and generally the steeplechase…. The Francis hero is an upholder of the stiff-upper-lip British traditions, and usually he is an upper-class type. He is very smart, laconic, moving easily among the upper crust and sharing their secret language. They recognize one another. He is an Arthurian knight, more Lancelot than Galahad, for he is not prissy and enjoys sex so long as the ground rules are observed. The Francis villains are unfailingly "common." Some of them may have upper-class pretensions, but a slip of the tongue, an act that only a cad would do, invariably betrays them. There can be something very inbred and snobbish in the Francis books.

"Trial Run" is a little different, in that it takes place mostly in Moscow. (p. 34)

Mr. Francis has been in Moscow. He describes that unlovely city with sheer distaste, and has some pointed observations to make about the repression there. He does show a silver lining: the system may be rotten, but the people—especially those who have anything to do with horses—are just fine human beings. Along the way, the hero, who has had absolutely no experience with espionage, shows himself to be as resourceful as the pros with whom he comes into contact. It's all a fairy tale, sort of, but Mr. Francis does it so skillfully, writes so smoothly and has such realistic backgrounds (who knows more about horses and racing than he does?) that "Trial Run" is entirely enjoyable. (pp. 34, 36)

Newgate Callendar, "Crime: 'Trial Run'," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1979 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), May 20, 1979, pp. 34, 36.

[Because it sticks more to racing than some of his other novels, Dick Francis's Whip Hand] is happily up to standard. The style is confident, the prose direct, the characterization and dialogue convincing. (p. 95)

[Sid Halley, ex-jockey and private investigator,] is a typically mean, embittered Francis hero, who has lost a hand in a racing smash when at the top of the jockey's list; he has to contend, too, with a ruined marriage and a bitchy ex-wife. Every Francis hero bears a grudge of some sort against the world, whether it be from natural or other causes. Francis himself has said that he finds it easier to write of such characters because it helps to build up the tension and provide motivation. Halley, like the others, has an account to square. The villains are—as in Fleming's books—corrupt, evil and sadistic; mainly establishment or semi-establishment figures whose lusts for power and money have totally twisted them. For them the racing game is an instrument for social revenge, or a means to an illegal fortune.

It is undeniable that Francis works to a formula—the hard-done-by chap blindly at grips with an unknown evil, the threads of which he gradually unravels. Frequently—perhaps too frequently—he is subjected to physical torture described in some detail. His heroes are hard men used to injury and pain and they learn to dish it out as once they had to learn to take it. Racing has made them stoics.

But, formula or no formula, Francis gets beneath the skin of his characters in a way few thriller writers manage. He does this best about his racing personnel but with each book his range has widened. The crooked trainer, Humber, in possibly his best book. For Kicks, is a living and lasting portrait, while the scenes in his dreadful stable have a Dickensian ring.

Fear stalks through these books; not the fear of the weakling but that of the strong, or, perhaps, once strong, man, doubting his strength under stress. He explored this first in his second book, Nerve, and in this book, Whip Hand, it is further developed, to an excruciating degree.

Finally, Francis can make a race come alive off his pages in thrilling fashion. One can hear the smash of birch, the creak of leather and the rattle of whips. The sweat, the strain, the tears, tragedies and occasional triumphs of the racing game are all there, as well as its seductive beauty. In this—as in much else—no other racing novelist can touch him. He has made racing into a microcosm of the contemporary world, with its flawed values and ruthless manipulation. But he can convey tenderness and fidelity too. (p. 96)

John Welcome, "Under Pressure," in London Magazine (© London Magazine 1980). Vol. 19, No. 12, March. 1980. pp. 95-6.

It was the late Edmund Crispin who recommended Dick Francis to me. "If you can stand the horse parts", he said, "the mystery parts are quite good," I found this an understatement in reverse. The horse parts, as everyone knows by now, are brilliant vignettes of a tiny portion of English life: the world of steeplechase racing. Novel by novel we meet the jockeys, the trainers, the owners (usually being taken for a ride in another sense), the bookmakers, the bloodstock agents, the sporting journalists. We learn what it is like to be a stableboy at a skinflint North Country trainer's, to ride in freezing February fog (the first sentence of the first novel is "The mingled smell of hot horse and cold river mist filled my nostrils"), to be Clerk of a run-down course that wrongdoers are determined to close. But the mystery parts, if inevitably less realistic, arise naturally from the greed, corruption and violence that lie behind the champagne, big cars and titled Stewards; they concern horse-pulling and betting frauds, and lead to wads of used notes in anonymous envelopes, whispered warnings by telephone, and sudden hideous confrontations with big men in stocking masks.

[The elements of steeplechase racing and mystery] are welded into adult reading by the Francis hero. Francis has no recurrent central character, no Bond or Marlowe; his heroes are jockeys, trainers, an owner who manufactures children's toys, a journalist, a Civil Service screener. But they tell the story in the first person, and they tend to sound alike…. Their narratives are laconically gripping, and graphic in a way that eschews Chandler's baroque images and Fleming's colour-supplement brand names. They combine unfailing toughness with infinite compassion.

There is a lot of pain in Francis novels, which puts some people off…. But there can be liberating happiness also: the loner heroes often find warmhearted unselfish women (Francis's women are usually as nice as his men, with the exception of a few fiendish bitches), and the love scenes, usually long deferred, are unpretentiously honest….

It would perhaps be pushing it a little to say that each Francis novel is a different story enclosing the same story, but it seems like this at times, as if the whole sequence were an allegory of the suffering individual inside endless inimical environments….

One hesitates to criticize a Francis novel, but Reflex displays in a less extreme form a defect of its predecessor Whip Hand, in which three themes proved in the end to have nothing to do with each other…. I have a feeling that Francis is tending to put too many themes into his books at present to compensate for the lack of real dominance of any one, and is failing to relate them satisfactorily: this, coupled with a certain blandness in the writing, suggests there may be a limit to the number of imaginative thrillers to be derived from the steeplechase scene. One can't exactly complain about this: Francis has written a dozen superb novels in less than twenty years, but there have been occasions since 1972 when the vein has shown signs of being worked out. This is one of them.

Philip Larkin, "Four Legs Good," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1980; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), No. 4045. October 10, 1980, p. 1127.

The mixture as before—or is it? Well, not quite. The formula [in Reflex] is certainly the same—the jockey struggling against odds, the secondary background, in this case photography, expertly related to the racing, the unflagging pace, the intricately worked-out plots—not always cohering—the nice girl innocently involved. As always the racing scenes are splendid, terse, evocative and of such immediate impact that one can almost hear the smash of birch and the thud of hooves; the photographic side, too, has clearly been carefully researched, its technicalities being set down with obsessional attention to detail.

But these are things common to the whole canon of Francis' work. This time a new dimension has been added. Since, and not before time, there is less emphasis on brutality—there is only one ritual beating up—he has been enabled to flesh out his characters. The portrait of Philip Nore, the mediocre jockey nearing the end of his career, is created with real insight; as is the interpretation of his relations with the horses he rides. (pp. 143-44)

The subsidiary characters, too, are brought to life with a surer touch than usual…. By widening and deepening the scope of his talents Francis has lost nothing of his narrative drive, so that he has here created something as far superior to the ordinary thriller as a classic winner to a selling plater. (p. 144)

John Welcome, "Photo-Finish," in London Magazine (© London Magazine 1981), Vol. 20, Nos. 11 & 12, February-March, 1981, pp. 143-44.

Some years ago, reviewing a novel by Robert Coover, Wilfrid Sheed said that "not to read it because you don't like baseball is like not reading Balzac because you don't like boarding houses." I bring this up because I am entirely innocent of race tracks. And yet: Not to read Dick Francis because you don't like horses is like not reading Dostoyevsky because you don't like God. Baseball, boarding houses, race tracks and God are subcultures. A writer has to have a subculture to stand up on….

What distinguishes "Reflex" from other Dick Francis fictions is its multitude of plots, all of them connecting, as if the artist were a spider with galactic aspirations for the latest web. What distinguishes Philip from previous reluctant heroes in Dick Francis fictions is that he is as much a photographer as he is a jockey, and we learn as much about developing film as we do about the steeplechase.

A camera, Philip tells us, is "your shield. Keeps you a step away from the world. Makes you an observer. Gives you an excuse not to feel." Perhaps. Certainly, in the movies of Antonioni and the novels of Jerzy Kosinski, the darkroom is as important as boarding houses were to Balzac and the bull was to Hemingway.

"Reflex" enthralls. Not the least of Mr. Francis's many accomplishments in his most complicated and successful mystery is that he introduces two characters who are supposed to be intelligent and who actually prove themselves to be so—a splendid performance.

John Leonard, "Books of the Times: 'Reflex'," in The New York Times (© 1981 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), March 20, 1981, p. 21.

[The] first page of "Reflex" shows Dick Francis doing what comes most naturally to him; it is also what he does best—writing about the thrills, spills and chills of horse racing.

There is a lot about riding for money in this book, and all of it is excellent….

Along with all the verve [shown in his first book "Dead Cert"], he now has much more knowledge about how to develop a story and make a plot work. Mr. Francis came to writing after a very successful career as a professional rider…. It seemed unlikely that his specialized knowledge would provide more than three or four fictional themes. Mr. Francis has proved those who nursed such thoughts to be entirely wrong. He has varied his plots intelligently…. (p. 3)

The best things in ["Reflex"], unless you enjoy the photographic puzzles, are the scenes of racing life, which are as good as anything Mr. Francis has done….

"Reflex" contains more interesting characterizations than most of Mr. Francis' books, particularly in Philip's poignant recollections of his shadowy butterfly mother, who used her charm to dump her small boy on one friend after another over the years. But there are limits to Mr. Francis' talent. His heroines are present simply to fill a few pages and sometimes to share a bed, and the characters who lie outside the racing world he knows so well are often drawn perfunctorily. Mr. Francis might reply that a writer of his kind of thriller cannot afford psychological intricacies, and very likely he would be right. In the end, action is the name of the Dick Francis game. In writing scenes of action, not all of them violent, and blending them into a mystery adventure, he is now a long way ahead of the rest of the field. (p. 45)

Julian Symons, "Argentine Detective & English Jockey," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1981 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), March 29, 1981, pp. 3, 45.