[In the following review, Cahill lauds Francis's Longshot as a satisfying, read-at-one-sitting novel.]

They're calling for passengers to board the plane to Tonga and I find that I'm unprepared. I need a book. Something light and entertaining and informative and plot driven. Ah, but there's always Dick Francis at the newsstand, several dozen of him, staring out from the best seller rack. I know that the book will be a mystery, probably a murder mystery, and that it will be set against a racing background. After all, Mr. Francis, once a champion jockey in Britain, has written a string of best selling mysteries, most of which check in regularly at the track.

I'm about as interested in horse racing as I am in dentistry—which is to say not at all. Still, experience has taught me that Mr. Francis is one of our most satisfying read it at one sitting writers. I know that. But I resist him because of the racing. Still, staring at a 16 hour flight, I find the phrase "don't take chances, go with Francis" echoing in my mind. So what if there are horses in this new book? When I look up from the last page, I'll be halfway across the Pacific, and the time will have passed painlessly. I'll know a little more about, ho hum, racing as well.

But Longshot turns out to be a bit of a surprise. It opens with a one sentence paragraph that speaks to me as viscerally as anything Mr. Francis has ever written. "I accepted a commission that had been turned down by four other writers, but I was hungry at the time." A writer who will accept any paying job? I find this a credible character.

The writer in question, John Kendall, is the author of such aptly titled survival manuals as Safari, Jungle and Ice. Ironically, he can't afford the necessities of life in London because he hasn't managed to make much of a living writing about ways to avoid death.

Hey, I write books and articles that sometimes concern themselves with survival. And I currently have a letter on my desk from the mortgage company wondering what happened to the September payment. This is the shock of recognition Writ Large. Either that or Dick Francis has been reading my mail.

Kendall agrees to write the biography of a successful and boorish—yes—horse trainer. He contracts to spend several months at his subject's training facility in rural England, where he will interview him.

Now, the simplest rules of craft suggest that if you introduce a survival expert in the first chapter, he should demonstrate his skills somewhere in the course of the book. However, John Kendall is a man who writes about remote locales, who advises his readers not to eat polar bear liver because "it stores enough vitamin A to kill humans." Rural England, I sensed, would not contain enough challenges for John Kendall.

But no, there's a survival situation in the second chapter. I read it the way doctors read operating room scenes or lawyers read courtroom dramas. Did the author hit the note or is he blowing smoke? Mr. Francis' scene is believable and convincing.

There is, of course, a murder to be solved, and Kendall finds himself dragged, willy-nilly, into the investigation. Meanwhile, the entire cast of suspects—the trainer, his son, the son's wife, an obnoxious amateur jockey—is reading and enjoying Kendall's survival manuals. To help wounds clot, Kendall informs one of them, it is necessary only to apply cobwebs, which are organic and "as sterile as most bandages."

As Kendall gets closer to discovering the identity of the killer, he is ambushed, according to—good Lord—the hunting and trapping instructions in his own books. There is a harrowing and breathless chapter toward the end that is a comment on the entire concept of survival, followed by an ending that wraps everything up in a neat bundle without cheating.

Perfect. I closed the book, satisfied Longshot ate up several thousand miles. Sentient human beings know that 16 hour flights are boring unto death. An intelligent, fast-paced mystery is a survival tool. Dick Francis can save your life.