In Memory of Dick Francis
I was very sorry to read that one of my favourite
mystery authors of all time, Dick Francis, passed
away this past weekend. I have loved Francis' writing
for more than 20 years now and will miss him very
much.
I first encountered Francis' work in 1989 while working for a string of small newspapers in Southern Ontario. I had dropped by the local library, looking for something good to read, and ran into a colleague from a rival newspaper. We got to talking about our favourite writers. After chatting for about a half hour, we realised we'd been trying to sell each other on our own faves so we agreed to a trade: I'd read his two favourites (Francis and some early 20th-Century English comic writer) and he'd read two of mine (I think at that point it was Raymond Chandler and F. Scott Fitzgerald).
I never really found out what he thought of Chandler and Fitzgerald but his suggestions proved to be a hit and a miss with me. The hit? Dick Francis. Francis was something special. I was enthralled from the first page. I wish I could remember which novel it was that I read first but, to be honest, I can't. I tore through one, then a second, then a third. Before I knew it, I was reading them at a rate of about one every two days, gobbling them up as quickly as I could find them at the library. When I had run through the holdings of all three branches of the local library, I finally had to suck it up and go to used book stores to buy them. I still own every one of them in paperback and, a couple of years ago, I found an autographed hard-cover edition of Twice Shy in a used book store: a real treasure.
I've read each novel at least twice. They are simply wonderful mysteries.
Francis' career, itself, sounds a bit like a dream. In the first part of his life (the time immediately following the Second World War), he was a champion jump jockey, eventually riding the Queen Mother's horses in races all over England and Europe. When a significant fall knocked him out of competitive racing in the mid-1950s, he went to work for a newspaper, covering the racing scene. Success came quickly for him.
He wrote his first novel, Dead Cert, in 1962 and it was an instant hit. With the research and editing help of his wife, Francis went on to write a novel a year until the late 1990s and, if I remember correctly, he's written a total of 42 mystery novels in all.
Every one of them is a thrill ride. His heroes are average people, his stories all have some sort of a horse-racing angle to them and you always find you learn something from each book.
I can't name a favourite among the 42 but I can tell you that certain scenes and certain characters stand out strongly in my memory. And I'll never be able to hear the phrase "torpid stumblebum" without thinking of Dick Francis.
I'm planning to go back and re-read his novels from first to last, now that he's gone. It's the least I can do for a writer who has given me so many hours of enjoyment and who has earned my respect and admiration. Goodbye, Dick Francis; you will be missed.
I first encountered Francis' work in 1989 while working for a string of small newspapers in Southern Ontario. I had dropped by the local library, looking for something good to read, and ran into a colleague from a rival newspaper. We got to talking about our favourite writers. After chatting for about a half hour, we realised we'd been trying to sell each other on our own faves so we agreed to a trade: I'd read his two favourites (Francis and some early 20th-Century English comic writer) and he'd read two of mine (I think at that point it was Raymond Chandler and F. Scott Fitzgerald).
I never really found out what he thought of Chandler and Fitzgerald but his suggestions proved to be a hit and a miss with me. The hit? Dick Francis. Francis was something special. I was enthralled from the first page. I wish I could remember which novel it was that I read first but, to be honest, I can't. I tore through one, then a second, then a third. Before I knew it, I was reading them at a rate of about one every two days, gobbling them up as quickly as I could find them at the library. When I had run through the holdings of all three branches of the local library, I finally had to suck it up and go to used book stores to buy them. I still own every one of them in paperback and, a couple of years ago, I found an autographed hard-cover edition of Twice Shy in a used book store: a real treasure.
I've read each novel at least twice. They are simply wonderful mysteries.
Francis' career, itself, sounds a bit like a dream. In the first part of his life (the time immediately following the Second World War), he was a champion jump jockey, eventually riding the Queen Mother's horses in races all over England and Europe. When a significant fall knocked him out of competitive racing in the mid-1950s, he went to work for a newspaper, covering the racing scene. Success came quickly for him.
He wrote his first novel, Dead Cert, in 1962 and it was an instant hit. With the research and editing help of his wife, Francis went on to write a novel a year until the late 1990s and, if I remember correctly, he's written a total of 42 mystery novels in all.
Every one of them is a thrill ride. His heroes are average people, his stories all have some sort of a horse-racing angle to them and you always find you learn something from each book.
I can't name a favourite among the 42 but I can tell you that certain scenes and certain characters stand out strongly in my memory. And I'll never be able to hear the phrase "torpid stumblebum" without thinking of Dick Francis.
I'm planning to go back and re-read his novels from first to last, now that he's gone. It's the least I can do for a writer who has given me so many hours of enjoyment and who has earned my respect and admiration. Goodbye, Dick Francis; you will be missed.