During the years that Dick Francis rode steeplechase jumps for the Queen Mother, he broke his collarbone a dozen times, fractured multiple ribs and dislocated, sprained, wrenched, twisted and smashed so many other parts of his anatomy that he lost count. It was while recuperating from one of these injuries, in fact, that the onetime champion rider took up writing as a hobby.

Today, 32 years and 28 novels later, the British author can still describe in wincing detail the pain of a broken ankle and the boredom that can send an injured jockey hobbling around on crutches in search of something to occupy his mind. Something like a good adventure with a bit of horseflesh and a spot of danger. Something like Straight.

Derek Franklin, the terribly decent hero of this well-told tale, is a steeplechase jockey who breaks his ankle in a miscalculated jump on the last fence at Cheltenham. Two days later, he gets another jolt when his estranged older brother, Greville Saxony Franklin, is killed in a freak accident. As his brother's sole heir and executor, Derek unexpectedly finds himself the head of a thriving gemology firm and owner of two race horses.

But before he can settle the estate, he becomes entangled in his brother's complicated business and personal affairs. Greville's home and office are mysteriously burgled, and Derek himself is attacked. Urgent offers, bordering on threatening demands, are extended by would-be buyers of Dozen Roses and Gemstones, the two race horses. A mistress surfaces. A million-and-a-half dollars worth of missing diamonds does not.

"I inherited my brother's life, and it nearly killed me," observes Derek, who limps through these and other baffling developments with a throbbing ankle and a stiff upper lip, drawn by the new insights he is gaining into his brother's forceful but extremely private identity. "I knew only his taste in clothes, food, gadgets and horses," he mourns "Not very much. Not enough."

In the course of his quest—for the missing diamonds, for more knowledge of his secretive brother, for the shadowy assailants who will reveal themselves as ruthless killers—the unflappable Derek also learns something about the semiprecious gem industry. In the laconic fashion that we have come to identify with Mr. Francis' essentially interchangeable heroes, the jockey even begins to appreciate his brother's collection of high-tech computerized gadgetry, especially when one of these little toys saves his life.

The author delivers his well-researched material in that didactic, politely impressed tone that he often reserves for such literary excursions outside the world of horse racing. The humble reader, however, remains unawed by the technical chitchat about chrysoberyls and peridots, and infinitely more grateful for the rare appearances of Gemstones the horse than for those of gemstones the gemstones. Even those elusive diamonds lack the sparkle and flash of Derek's too-brief encounters with horses and their owners and trainers.

It can be said, without spoiling the story, that Derek eventually overcomes the villain (who has stuck out all along, like an army boot at a cotillion ball) and discovers that his brother was something of a saint, embodying all those values of loyalty and integrity and fair play that Francis heroes live by and die for.

"If home was where the heart was," Derek says, "I really lived out on the windy Downs and in stable yards and on the raucous racetracks." If this nice chap follows doctor's orders, perhaps the author will let him heal in time for the Grand National.