My romp through the novels of Dick Francis is at an end. I closed the cover on his final novel, Shattered, last night. Yes, at least one more novel has since been published with Dick listed as a co-author with his son Felix but I don't consider that to be pure Dick Francis so any such books don't count.

I enjoyed Shattered quite a bit but I don't think it can compete with Francis' best. First of all, there's not much horse racing in it and, second of all, the villain is too cartoonish to be truly believable. The novel works, however, thanks to a strong main character, a decent love subplot and a dose of fascinating information about glass-blowing and glass-making in general.

This completes my re-reading of Dick Francis' novels. I continue to be impressed with his consistent production and quality. Yes, some novels stand out while others are clearly weaker (Second Wind would take my vote as his worst by far) but, when you figure the man basically wrote a novel a year for more than 40 years, you can't help but be impressed.

My next reading project will likely be Douglas Adams' The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (with additional novels), followed no doubt by another visit to the world of J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter. I know I should be more adventurous and read something completely new but... These are old friends I just have to see again.

And I may add in The World According To Garp, John Irving's classic. We just watched the wonderful film version of the book starring a very young Robin Williams and equally young Glenn Close. It certainly made me wish to re-read the novel I so enjoyed when I was younger.

Tags: Dick Francis, Mystery, Novels, Shattered, Douglas Adams, Garp, John Irving, Robin Williams, Glenn Close

A busy week for me, with work heating up and the sudden but welcomed exertion of pressure on me to complete my manuscript submission package for The Silent Goodbye and send it to the publisher. I am now absolutely determined to have it on its way to the publisher by the end of the day Sunday.

First, a word on Dick Francis. I finished reading Come to Grief yesterday and very much enjoyed it. After the brief dip in the quality of writing in Wild Horses, Come to Grief represents Francis at somewhere close to his best. It seems Sid Halley demands as high standards of his writer as he does of himself as investigator.

What is really special about Come to Grief, however, is that you get the feeling that, in a way he's never done before, Francis is writing about himself, at least that part of him that was a champion jockey. Come to Grief pits Halley, a former champion as a professional, against Ellis Quint, his arch-rival, the champion amateur jockey against whom Halley rode aggressively and often. Despite the fact that they are on opposite sides of a vicious crime, there is a mutual respect between the characters and Francis draws back the curtain on some of the raw, primitive drives that make a jockey a champion. It's quite amazing to read.

Now I'v taken up To The Hilt, a late 1990s book featuring an artist as the protagonist. The nice things about these later books is that I've only read them once or twice over the last fifteen years, meaning I can come at them almost new. I remember very little about them, even less than I do about the earlier books that I have read any number of times.

As for my own deadline, my friend Ross has informed me that he has spoken to his publisher and told him to expect my submission. This is a massively huge favour and one for which I am extremely grateful. Publishers receive thousands of unsolicited submissions each year (many from agents, which is already an advantage I do not enjoy) and it is a minor miracle for such a submission to make it off the slush pile for serious consideration. Ross has provided me at least a step toward that miracle. I will now be an unsolicited manuscript from an unknown writer that might actually be lifted from the pile and given a good read.

No guarantees, of course. The odds are against me. But at least now it's the quality of the writing that will make or break me, not the stuff of miracles. Thanks Ross. I hope to do you proud.

Tags: Dick Francis, Phillip Gold, Novels, Mystery, Come to Grief, To The Hilt

So maybe, just maybe, I wrote too soon. After reading about 40 pages of Dick Francis' 33rd mystery, Wild Horses, I wrote him off. He's tapering off, I thought. Lost his mojo.

Well, Dick, I apologise. Wild Horses finally found its feet and turned out to be pretty good. And the next novel, Come To Grief, is a cracker. From the first line.

Of course, Sid Halley helps. Halley is probably Francis' best known protagonist and Come To Grief is his third appearance as the centre of attention. Perhaps to shake the lethargy, Francis writes much of his novel as an extended flashback and it works very well. He tells us who the bad guy is from the first page and we're lured into caring deeply about how Halley fingered him as the evil doer and what the consequences will be for Halley himself of pointing the finger at such a well-loved public figure as being responsible for such heinous crimes.

Francis adds a very sympathetic young client and a rebellious teen and he's got a novel that works on many levels.

I wish I could write like that. I wish I could find the time (and the energy) to write at all. I spent today golfing (an up-and-down 18 holes) and finishing up the branch trimming exercise so I'm exhausted heading into a week when work will be just revving up for the new school year.

Tags: Dick Francis, Wild Horses, Come to Grief

It was on the microwave, behind a thank-you card. Hidden, sure, but not lost forever. Hooray.

I am amazed at just how relieved and happy I felt when I finally spotted my copy of Dick Francis' Wild Horses late yesterday afternoon, after having missed it for almost a week. I am nearing the end of a journey through Francis and I felt totally at sea when the 1994 novel went missing.

I even went to a used book store and a campus book store, looking to buy a replacement. I'm so used to having something to read (and for the last three months that something has been Dick Francis) that I was entirely thrown off by not having the book around. And I didn't feel like I could move on to Francis' next novel: I'm committed to reading them all in order and I was NOT going to break the string, no matter how desperate I felt.

The only problem is, Wild Horses is not a great novel. I have now arrived at the stage of Francis' career where, in my opinion at least, he started to wind it down. The ideas grew stale, the writing more lazy and stilted, the characters flatter and less interesting.

Oh well, I think Wild Horses is number 33 in his collected works so I guess I should cut him some slack. It's not awful. It's just not great.

But I found it! I'm going to glory in the delight of that moment for a while.

Tags: Dick Francis, Wild Horses, Novels, Mystery

Friday night and we've just come back from walking the dog. We're debating cancelling our satellite TV subscription since we are currently paying about $45 per month for practically nothing. I watched for four hours the other night and couldn't find one show I wanted to watch. So I open up Safari and find out both the PGA golf championship and tonight's CFL football game between Winnipeg and Hamilton are available live on-line for free.

Hmmm... What are we paying $45 a month for anyway?

But that's not what I was planning to write about today. I was planning to write about writing.

Why? Because, after a long drought, I can feel the creative juices start to flow again.

Why? Several reasons: first, because my conversations with my nieces got me started on what seems to be a fantastic new Phillip Gold novel, one that is constantly running across my mind, even as I spend a day trimming tree branches; second, because a friend at work mentioned, out of the blue, that she had come across my website some time ago and had really enjoyed reading my new Rowling-world novel, The Way Forward ("It's like the seventh book never ended," she said); and third, because my chat with that same friend, which touched on our mutual love for the old Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, reminded me of my own Abigail Massey stories and I feel like I want to get back to them as well.

It helps as well that I finally got around to starting the much-abbreviated synopsis of The Silent Goodbye in preparation for my submission of that novel to a publisher.

So things are percolating on the writing side.

On the reading side, things are not so good. I started Dick Francis' Wild Horses on the weekend, only to lose the darn thing. I'm worried that someone accidentally packed the book up and took it back to Ontario with them when my in-laws left on Monday. I might have to go and buy another copy, since losing my original copy stalls my reading plans completely.

And if I could just manage to catch my sister on Skype, life would be even better!

Tags: Dick Francis, Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey, Novels, Writing, Mystery, CFL, Tiger Cats

It took me more than a week to read Dick Francis' Driving Force. It took me less than a day to read Dick Francis' Decider. The speed of the read gives a clear indication of how much I enjoyed each novel.

In my humble opinion, Driving Force is a mess. It is quite possibly (quite probably) Francis' worst book. It lacks excitement and its main character, Freddie Croft, is a real dud. My best guess is that Francis got wind of a cunning crime, then tried to build a story around it. Unfortunately, the crime, importing a horse illness from France on rabbits and then infecting certain race horses with it so as to make particular races more winnable, does not lend itself to the building of suspense, the creation of interesting characters, or the development of a useful plot. That's not to say Francis doesn't try hard to make it work but even the addition of a faintly sketched romance and a new family twist can't save this one.

Wow, is this a bad book!

That makes Decider even more of a surprise. Written immediately following Driving Force, Decider is a wonderful book, with a winning main character and a heart-stopping story. Picking up on the theme of the extended family so well drawn in Hot Money, Decider follows Lee Morris, architect, builder and father of six young boys, as he finds himself drawn unwillingly into the murderous Stratton family, which is being torn apart after the death of its patriarch.

Where Driving Force plods, Decider sprints. Francis handles the large cast with impressive finesse and brings Morris' five older sons to vivid, memorable life. It's hard to make small children central to the plot of any mystery but Francis does it beautifully.

In reading all of his novels in order, I am attempting to understand how Francis developed and grew as a writer. I'm still not sure how to deal with the failure that is Driving Force, especially when Decider, the next book in the series, is so good. My working theory is that Francis loved the crime so much he thought he could weave the novel around it. Maybe he actually believed, after penning more than thirty successful books, he was capable of this miracle.

And maybe he learned his lesson and went back to his proven strengths in Decider. I'm not completely convinced but at least it's a theory.

Tags: Dick Francis, Decider, Novels, Mystery

Heat wave in NB. Hot, humid, air-conditioner-less province. UGH. Couldn't get much done other than surviving and keeping as cool as possible.

I did manage to take another look at the synopsis for my novel, The Silent Goodbye, and do a little polishing. Hoorah for me.

I also spent an afternoon in a local pub, with a huge, sweaty crowd, cheering on the brave Dutch soccer team in the World Cup semi-final against Uruguay. Fun times. After they surprised Brazil, it was good to see the Netherlands didn't have a let down against lower-ranked Uruguay. A little scary at the end but still great. Hup Holland! Beat Spain!

And on the reading front, I have finished the 1980s in my journey through Dick Francis. The latter part of that decade produced some great novels, including the matched pair involving Kit Fielding as the protagonist (Break In and Bolt) as well as another of my personal favourites, Hot Money, and the only one of Francis' novels set in Canada, The Edge. The decade ends with Straight, the intriguing story of a jump jockey who finds himself thrust into the shoes of his recently deceased older brother as he tries to resolve the estate and the mysteries it hides.

Break In, Hot Money and Straight are all interesting because they involve Francis exploring family relationships in a new way: Break In deals with a pair of fraternal twins, still sorting out a long-standing feud with another family; in Hot Money, the outcast son of a prolific multi-millionaire takes on the task of figuring out which one of the patriarch's three living ex-wives and numerous off-spring is trying to kill the old man; and Straight offers a soulful exploration of what it means to be brothers.

Tomorrow (Sunday) is golfing, then cheering on the Oranje in the final against Spain. Hup Holland.

Tags: Holland, World Cup, Dick Francis, Phillip Gold, Writing, Mystery

We have just returned from a fantastic four-day trip to Prince Edward Island (PEI). From our home in Fredericton, PEI is about a four-hour drive away, making it easily accessible via the amazing Confederation Bridge (about 14 km long over the Northumberland Straight. Amazing!).

We went to the northeast part of the Island, landing at a small B&B/Country Cabin place called Howarth House in the tiny village of Priest Pond. From there, we had easy drives to such wonderful places as East Point, Basin Head, Georgetown, Souris, St. Peter's and many more. We were told that the western and central parts of the Island were more popular with tourists but we're not that interested in high-traffic areas and the Eastern portion of PEI gave us exactly what we wanted.

On the first evening, our hosts Murray and Kerry escorted us, and another couple (along with their sweet girls), through private property to a beach on the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. We learned that the beaches on the north side of PEI are red from the sandstone and the beaches on the south side of the island, along the Northhumberland Straight, have white sand. We also learned about sea glass from Murray and Kerry during our evening stroll along this beach. Mother Nature joined the fun by providing us not just spectacular cloud and sun combinations but also a series of beautiful rainbows to the east.

Friday morning, Patti, Marlee and I drove up to East Point, the place where the Straight and the Gulf meet at the easternmost tip of the Island. The lighthouse there is being restored but nothing prepared us for the spectacular red beach we found by walking along the north coast from the tip, then descending to the water. We walked for several kilometres on that beach and never saw another soul. An amazing experience, to be sure.

Friday evening, we visited the beach at Basin Head (complete with the singing sand, that actually makes a squeaking sound when you walk on it) where I threw Marlee's favourite orange balls onto a sandbar about twenty feet from the shore, forcing her to splash through the water, then onto the sandbar to fetch the ball, then back again through the water. Great fun. The next morning, we went to Red Point, another nice place but that day marred by what looked to be the torso of a tuna (a massive fish; it just seems small when they put it in the tins) washed up on the beach. Both beaches are on the south shore and offer white sand but still no crowds. Incredible.

Towns like Cardigan, St. Peter's and Georgetown offered interesting places to walk and shop. We especially enjoyed chatting with the owner of the Eclectic Mariner in St. Peter, a transplanted Torontonian who welcomed Marlee into her shop with open arms and many treats.

The focus of our visit was a Village Feast in Souris, overseen by Chef Michael Smith of Food-Network fame. More than a thousand Islanders and several of us from away came together to enjoy a steak dinner in the great outdoors, listen to local musical acts and bid on prize packs, all in support of Farmers Helping Farmers, an organisation that helps provide food for poor people in Kenya.

So we're home and tired but happy to have gone. I've got about ten too many black-fly bites, to be honest, and didn't get as much reading done as I wanted to (finishing only Dick Francis' Canadian adventure, The Edge). I guess you can't have everything!

Tags: PEI, Souris, East Point, Basin Head, Dick Francis, Confederation Bridge, Michael Smith, Howarth House

Who would have thought that something as simple as a blood test would knock me so much for a loop? My doctor set me up to have some blood tests done and, 15 phials of the red stuff later, I was a sagging bag of pooh. For the entire day. I fell asleep in a meeting, fell asleep at my desk and had to cancel a golf date for the evening. Amazing.

I'm better now, thank goodness, and ready to turn my attention to the cover letter for my novel submission to a publisher. With the draft synopsis fermenting in my brain (and on the hard drive of my trusty net book), I have to compose a friendly, one-page invitation to convince someone that my work is worth publishing and will, in fact, sell. This might be as tough a task as the synopsis. But, if Phillip Gold is ever going to see the public light of day, I have to do this and do it effectively.

The blood-test-induced lethargy did, on the other hand, put me in a nice position to spend some more time with Dick Francis. I'm now reading Proof, a novel from the mid-1980s, that seems to me to mark the beginning of a new stage in Francis' writing. Proof is a much more philosophical novel with a main character, wine-merchant Tony Beach, who is still dealing with the recent death of his beloved wife and, on a perhaps deeper level, with his long-term feelings of failure and inadequacy. He is, perhaps, the deepest, most complex of the protagonists to this point in Francis' library.

Further, this book explores masculine friendship much more than it does male-female romance, as Beach experiences the birth of relationships with three male characters: a sharp but friendly corporate sleuth, a crusty police inspector and his crafty and determined Chief Inspector. In fact, for the first time in a Francis novel, there is no blossoming male-female romance in this one.

Francis also makes much better use of suspense in this book: early on, a minor character is murdered in an extremely grotesque way; this forms a terrifying backdrop for all of the confrontations between Beach and the villain, as the timid wine merchant sweats through the thought of being similarly treated. It's quietly effective and very interesting.

I note as well that the back cover of the book features a quote from Kingsley Amis, the noted English author, rather than a series of slogans gleaned from the popular press. As Proof hit the market, Francis was finally being taken seriously not just as a mystery writer but as a capital "A" Author, respected, admired, and the Amis quote is clear evidence of his ascension.

I'm very much enjoying Proof. And I'm impressed with the continued development of Dick Francis as a writer that it represents.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Mystery, Novels, Blood tests, Dick Francis

I find myself still daunted by the prospect of trying to write the synopsis for The Final Goodbye. I've never been good at writing these things and I'm not feeling much more confident now.

My research has told me that my synopsis can be up to 16 pages long, which is a really good thing to know. That fact alone makes the task seem less frightening: until recently, I had thought the synopsis to be only four pages long and still a full and complete summary of the events in the story. And I've even now made a start at writing it. I'm three paragraphs in and feeling fairly good about what I've produced.

In the meantime, I'm continuing my journey through the novels of Dick Francis. I'm now into the 1980s and the books are becoming longer and more complex. I've read all of them before, at least once, so I often pick up a new novel with some sense of what it's about. What amazes me is how unconsciously resistant I am to continue reading the ones that have particularly violent or nasty plots.

I had to force myself to read Banker, the first novel with what I would consider a truly monstrous villain. In Banker, Francis displays a hard edge, a willingness to kill off characters, even very innocent ones, for the sake of the plot, an interest in moving beyond your regular kinds of mayhem into pure nastiness and evil. Calder Jackson, the villain, is actually willing to poison pregnant brood mares to ensure badly deformed babies and destroy the reputation and value of the stud, a magnificent horse named Sandcastle.

Francis pulls no punches in this book and it is gut-wrenchingly effective.

He is also branching out when it comes to the nature of the romantic interest in the novel. In Banker, the protagonist is in love with the wife of his aging boss, feelings she apparently returns. But both keep their emotions under wraps throughout the book, finding small comfort in stolen moments and social niceties. It's a surprising sign of how far Francis is willing to go at this point in his career, however, when he not only writes of the illicit relationship with approbation throughout the novel but also goes so far as to bring news of the aging boss's death in the last paragraph, promising future happiness for the star-crossed lovers.

Nothing I'm saying here should suggest that Banker is anything but a highly effective, thoroughly entertaining novel. It's truly great. It's just interesting to see Francis pushing so boldly the boundaries of his own successful blueprint.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Dick Francis, Writing, Mystery

My recent trip to Ontario provided me with ample opportunities to read: I read during the airport waits and on the flights themselves; I enjoyed my books while traveling in and around Toronto/Hamilton on the trains and buses of the Ontario GO Transit system; and I also found myself with time to kill in various coffee shops and on park benches in Hamilton.

I guess it shouldn't surprise me, then, that I read not only the Artemis Fowl book but also three novels by my favourite, Dick Francis. First up was Whip Hand, the fantastic second novel featuring Sid Halley as the protagonist. This is a great book and, in my mind, represents the true coming of age of Francis' writing. Whip Hand offers both a more complex plot (or series of inter-woven plots), more cruel and devious villains as well as a deeper exploration of the main character. I think a poll of Francis fans would identify this novel as one of the top three in his entire collection.

Then came Reflex, which is at or near the top of my personal list of Francis novels. I'm not sure why I like this book so much but it really resonates with me. The main character, Philip Nore, is a young jump jockey with a passion for photography and a murky past. Even as he gets drawn into a deadly mystery left behind by a deceased professional photographer, his estranged maternal grandmother manipulates him into searching for the half-sister he never knew. It's a wonderful blending of the two main story lines and Nore himself is a fascinating character. I always launch into reading this novel with great pleasure and, despite having read it several times in the past, I am never disappointed.

Twice Shy is a less effective story, told in two parts. In the first half, teacher Jonathan Derry finds himself the target of a murderous father-and-son team, desperate to get their hands on a computer program that captures the magic of the only successful betting system for horse races ever created. Fifteen years later, Jonathan's younger brother William becomes the new target of the bullying son, fresh out of prison. William too must find a way to stifle the killer and keep his loved ones safe. It's an inventive structure and an interesting premise but I just don't feel it's entirely successful. I do, however, find it interesting to read about early programming practices for the first personal computers.

I even got a start on Banker before arriving home but I've been so busy since my return that I'm only just getting to the heart of it. Again, I don't think it's the best he's ever written but Francis does do a nice job of creating an interesting platonic relationship between the main character and his boss' wife. The villain, horse healer Calder Jackson, is also a wonderful creation.

I have found this process of reading Francis' novels in order, in such a tight time line, highly instructive. I'm able to see how his writing style has developed, how approaches he tests in early novels are perfected in later ones, and how he gained confidence in his ability to create increasingly complex plots, often involving a weaving together of complementary sub-plots.

So it's been a worthwhile exercise for me, from both an enjoyment and a learning perspective.

Tags: Dick Francis

I'm just back from a week in Ontario where I took care of some personal business and visited with family and friends. It was a great trip, if a bit emotional, and I'm afraid I didn't get the chance to see everyone I had hoped to see. I did, however, get a lot of reading done and delivered copies of the second draft of my latest Phillip Gold novel, The Silent Goodbye, to my next round of readers.

I'll be posting blogs on a number of topics over the next couple of days, including the three Dick Francis novels I read on my trip, Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer (a book recommended strongly to me by Emily and Clare, who even suggested that some of their friends feel Colfer's book is better than Harry Potter), birds I saw on the trip and even perhaps a commentary on the state of my garden here in Nota Bene. We've had a warm, wet spring and the jungle in my backyard is threatening to overwhelm us.

Right now, however, my energy is at a low ebb so I won't be blogging more tonight, just posting a promise new entries soon. Good night!

Tags: Phillip Gold, Dick Francis, Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer

The air is warm and the sun is shining. Bits of plant life are turning lovely shades of green. Golf courses are opening their gates and manicuring their fairways. Spring is in the air!

I spent this past weekend celebrating spring with 27 holes of golf, some gardening and not much else. I hardly touched the revision of The Silent Goodbye and managed to finish reading only one Dick Francis novel: Knock Down, another of my favourites. I did get a chance to watch Bon Cop, Bad Cop, a very successful, very Canadian action comedy that provided lots of laughs, some great characters but falls down on the plot.

Patti finished her reading of The Silent Goodbye, my latest Phillip Gold novel, and has already provided some excellent insights and pages of micro-comments on the smaller stuff. I hope to get back to the revising process today with a view to getting the finished, polished draft done before my trip to Ontario in early May. I find that setting myself deadlines is very helpful in sparking me to complete tasks.

The break from actual writing work has not been a complete loss from a creativity standpoint: while lazing about or walking the fairways I have been thinking about how to revise and improve my first and second Gold novels, A Fleck of Gold and All That Glisters. I am so pleased with how much action there is in The Silent Goodbye that I have been trying to come up with an interesting, preferably court-base subplot for each of the earlier novels and, while Fleck continues to provide challenges, I believe I have come up with a good approach to Glisters.

The idea I've had for Glisters involves incorporating a Phillip Gold short story I wrote a couple of years ago into the beginning of the book, then using it to flow into the main plot of the existing novel. The introduction of Violet, the short story, should add punch to the opening, a court-room counterpoint to the main Kevin Dallanger kidnapping plot and a great deal more action overall. The rewrite process will also allow me to transition the book into third-person while moving it in time from a point before the events of The Silent Goodbye to a time following that novel.

I know. I know. I'm full of ideas. It's putting them into action (or written words) that is the problem.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Dick Francis, Bon Cop, Bad Cop

My journey through Dick Francis has reached the 1970s which, to be frank, is not necessarily the best decade for Mr. F.

I just finished Bonecrack, a novel about a corporate consultant who is forced by circumstance to take over his father's horse training business and finds himself being coerced into apprenticing as a jockey the son of a violent mobster. Of all of Francis' books, this is the one that I like the least. I don't know if it's the plot or the characters or the hero or what, but I really have a hard time forcing myself to read it. I finally did just that: forced myself to sit down for a couple of hours and plow through it. I still don't like it much. I don't find the main character sympathetic and I find the idea that a big-time international mobster would personally torture someone into allowing his son to ride horses a bit far-fetched. But at least now I'm through it.

On to Smokescreen, one of the novels I like best. The hero is Edward Lincoln, a movie star whose father was a horse trainer. His task is simple: go to South Africa and try to figure out why the horses owned by a close friend are running so poorly. It's a fun book and "Linc" is a great character: a movie star who refuses to forget where he came from; an actor who is so protective of his personal life and his private self that he holds back in his performances on film. It helps that the plot is clever and interesting and the book is filled with nifty minor characters. It's also quite fascinating to see South Africa of 1972 depicted so vividly.

My other two reading projects (The Girl Who Played With Fire and Candide) come next. I just couldn't leave Francis directly following the disappointment that is Bonecrack.

Tags: Dick Francis

The second absolutely gorgeous day in a row. Clear blue skies, temperatures in the low 20s, snow on the retreat. Fabulous.

With the long weekend, I've been taking some time to start the job of tidying up the yard and getting ready for the real work. I wandered around this morning, picking up all the random garbage that had blown onto the property during the course of a windy winter and, low and behold, I found two tiny bouquets of pretty yellow flowers. Now, I am well aware that they might be a form of dandelion but that would spoil the joy of finding them pushing their way up into the world.

I have also been taking advantage of this quiet weekend with beautiful weather to continue with my reading. I finished Dick Francis' Rat Race this morning. Not my favourite. I don't mind the main character, Matt Shore, but I find the whole plot extremely thin and a little too contrived. The love interest, Nancy Ross, is no great shakes either. Never fully developed, she takes on too much importance too soon for the main character and that makes for a fairly wooden relationship. On the other hand, there is a pretty fantastic scene where Shore, a commercial pilot, attempts to locate Nancy in her tiny Cessna somewhere over southern England after her plane was sabotaged and rendered without electrical power. A beautifully written, tense scene. It's too bad the rest of the book doesn't live up to it.

I've picked up Candide again but it's slow going. My French is okay but not strong enough to read this classic at any great pace. I'll keep working on it though and, when I need a break, I'll switch to The Girl Who Played with Fire. Some break!

Tags: Dick Francis, Garden

I had hoped the purchase of my new cool tool would have spurred me into a writing frenzy. Alas, no such luck. I love my new netbook and its ultimate portability; I've taken it to numerous meetings and kept useful notes. But I haven't actually gotten back involved in the writing process yet.

That really shouldn't surprise me, however. I have just completed the long process of writing and revising my latest Phillip Gold novel, The Silent Goodbye, which currently sits with some of my readers, and I know it often takes some time to "change gears" before getting involved in another big writing project. So I'm not letting it worry me. I'm just noting it and waiting patiently.

And with the weather here in Nota Bene finally smiling down on us, it's hard to think of anything but getting ready for spring: I've got my vegetable seeds planted in their indoor gardens; I've tidied up the backyard; I've stowed the snow blower and rolled out the BBQ. With the long Easter weekend, everything is pointing to peaceful days with low stress and maximum sunshine.

To keep with that theme, I'm doing a lot of reading. I finished Dick Francis' Enquiry yesterday. I always forget about this novel when I'm thinking about my favourite Francis books and yet, when I read it, I always enjoy it thoroughly. Kelly Hughes is a jump jockey who is "warned off" racing in the book's first lines; that means his license to ride is suspended and he is not allowed to be anywhere near horse racing. The charges are trumped up and the evidence faked but it's up to Hughes to figure things out before it's too late to revive his career and before the villains finish him off. It's not a complicated story but it's a good one and I find the two major characters (Hughes and Roberta Cranfield, the snobbish daughter of Hughes' social-climbing employer) really fun.

I also have Stieg Larsson's second novel, The Girl Who Played With Fire, on the go. I'm having a hard time getting into it, perhaps because I can tell it's going to be intense and perturbing. At the same time, I'm dipping my toes into Voltaire's Candide in the original French. For that, I need to find time to focus. That's not going to happen while Patti's away and Marlee is entirely my responsibility. The dog just demands too much attention.

I had mentioned in an earlier post that I was planning to rewrite my first Philllip Gold novel, A Fleck of Gold, entirely from scratch, without going back and reviewing the now-six-year-old original final draft. I'm faltering on that plan. I feel a deep-seated urge to go back and re-read the original. Maybe that hesitation is also contributing to my current slow period for writing.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Dick Francis

The past week has been incredibly busy here in Nota Bene. After a week of sunshine and warm temps, we found ourselves back into the rain, sleet and, yes, snow just in time for our long-anticipated visit from my sister Janice and brother-in-law Harry earlier this week.

It was a great visit, though much too brief and much too busy. I know we wore ourselves out with the whirlwind tour and I think I dropped two pretty exhausted people off at the Freddie airport on Tuesday afternoon. It was still, however, a great deal of fun and so nice to see them again.

On the Reading and Writing fronts, there's a great deal to report. The Silent Goodbye has been sent to some of my readers (Patti, Ross, John and now Janice and Harry) and I'm starting to receive some very positive responses to it. Ross has sent his comments on the first 80 pages of the book while Patti has given me verbal responses on the first half. I'm happy to report that both readers seem to like it and both have made suggestions and offered criticisms that are remarkably consistent. That's good news when you're a writer: when multiple readers find the same things strong and the same things needing work, it's much easier to do the revisions.

In the meantime, I have begun a full rewrite of my first Phillip Gold novel, A Fleck of Gold, to match the narrative style of TSG. Since I wrote the original version of Fleck more than a decade ago, I've decided to try to write it again from scratch. I know the plot and characters very well so I'm avoiding rereading the original draft; I'm writing it again fresh. It's a weird feeling, to be sure, but I think the approach will help. I'm a better writer today than I was back then and, were I to try simply to revise the original version, I don't think I would be aggressive enough in my revisions.

I have also come up with a better working title for the next completely new Phillip Gold novel: instead of Luke, as I had at first proposed, I'm now working with the title, The Shadow of the Father. Not as snappy but I think it captures well the central theme of the book.

On the reading side of things, I finished Stieg Larsson's epic first novel, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, last week. It was great. An impressive book with a complex, challenging plot and several truly fascinating characters. I thought the denouement went on a little long (the climax takes place a full 120 pages before the book finally skids to a stop) but it was still a pretty fantastic read.

I dove right into Larsson's second book, The Girl Who Played With Fire, but, after reading the four-page prologue that is told entirely from the point of view of a thirteen-year-old girl who has been imprisoned by a sexual predator and chained to a bed, I had to put it aside for a while. The first book was pretty intense; I think I'm going to need a little bit of psychological rest before I tackle this second one.

Instead, I'm back to Dick Francis for a while. Less stressful. I'll return to Larsson in a couple of weeks, I think.

On the music front, my brother-in-law Gavin helped me figure out how I can turn my old cassette tapes into MP3 files. Unfortunately, most of my store-bought tapes from the '80s (Kate Bush, Thompson Twins, Pat Benatar, et al) have proven themselves to be completely degraded and virtually unusable; fortunately, the tapes I really wanted to preserve are still in good shape.

My main goal was to save a series of tapes I have that feature a Hamilton band I hung out with while in University in the late 1980s: the Dik Van Dykes. I have seen some discussion of the Dykes on the internet and even a couple of cover versions of their iconic tune, "The Birthday Song", on Youtube. I was surprised to read people lamenting the fact that so many of the early Dykes recordings are not readily available on the net.

So I've spent some time converting four tapes I have of the Dik Van Dykes into MP3 files. Once I figure out how to do it, I'll share some of them with the public (unless of course Mike, Renee, Stu, Sarah, Steve or Paul contact me to ask me not to post them online), either through this website or Youtube. In case you're wondering, I've converted the Dyke's second major album, Waste Mor Tape, into digital format as well as three live tapes I've got: New Years Eve 1988 at the Gown and Gavel (a simulcast on CFMU radio hosted by yours truly); a live show at Chuggies bar in Hamilton from 1989 (I think) as well as an earlier live show from the Gown, date unknown.

We'll see how it goes. Meanwhile, I'll keep reading and writing.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Ross Pennie, Stieg Larsson, Dick Francis, Dik Van Dykes

Oh my goodness! With my birthday now over (but very happily celebrated) I find myself with a fistful of reading and writing priorities staring me in the face.

I finished Dick Francis' Blood Sport, a novel I very much enjoyed for the pure detective work in it. Set mostly in the US, this one involves a trio of missing horses and the cold trails leading to them. Francis' hero, Gene Hawkins, struggles with severe depression as he works to piece together what happened to a prize stallion that went missing on its trip from New York to Kentucky, the third such disappearance in the past ten years. Although the depression stuff is a little heavy-handed, the mystery is a good one and the personal stories are also finely developed.

But now I've had to put my journey through Francis aside for a short while to focus on other pressing tasks. First, my sister and brother-in-law have sent me Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, an international best seller that will soon come out in movie form here in North America. Larsson's sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire, has just appeared in paperback form and my sister assures me it's on its way to Fredericton as well. Having finished Blood Sport last night, I'm only 42 pages into the first Larsson book but so far it's pretty good. I like the main character and the prologue promises an intriguing story.

At the same time, I've received my friend Ross Pennie's draft second novel in electronic form with a request that I give it the writers' group treatment. So I'm trying to spend some time with that book as well, mostly on my lunch hour at work. I've gotten well into it already and am really enjoying it but, since it's still in draft form, I won't go into much more detail than that.

My third major project is the review and revision of my own Phillip Gold novel, The Silent Goodbye. I finished writing the first draft in December and promised myself I'd set it aside for a while, asking only Patti to review it. Well, Ross indicates that he's looking something to occupy his time while people review the draft of his own novel so I figure I better do at least a quick review and then send it along to him. John Hewson has also indicated a willingness to read it for me; I value both of their input and plan to strike while the iron is hot.

Once I've got those projects finished, I'll turn my attention to another gift I received for my recent birthday: Voltaire's Candide, in the original French. My understanding of French (written and spoken) is passable but I'm interested to see if I'm up to the task of reading this classic. We'll see, I guess.

So it's a busy time out here in NB. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Tags: Dick Francis, Voltaire, Phillip Gold, Stieg Larsson, Candide, Dragon Tattoo, Ross Pennie

My recent conversations with writing buddies back in Ontario have re-lit the fire, so to speak. I look at the black binder containing the first draft of The Silent Goodbye, sitting there on our coffee table between Patti's reading sessions, and I have to hold myself back from taking it up and starting the revision process.

I am interested to read Patti's comments, however, and don't want to start revising until I've received her input. She's a careful and interested reader with a good eye both for the macro issues (character, plotting, thematic development, narrative consistency) and the micro stuff, like grammar, spelling, consistency in names and hair colour and stuff like that. I know I'll regret it if I don't wait for her to finish and provide her feedback.

The copy she's reading has been printed in eight-point type to save paper so it's a bit of a challenge but she's gamely marching on. She tells me she had nightmares last night related to the novel: I'm taking that as a sign that it's fairly effective so far.

Meanwhile, I've moved on to Dick Francis' fifth novel, Flying Finish. It's not quite as successful as the first four, to my mind. This is the first novel that focuses on the English class system as one of the sources of conflict, perhaps explaining why I, as a lowly Canadian, don't find it so effective as a novel. Henry Grey, the hero, is a fastidious young man who stands to inherit his ailing father's Earldom; to combat both that paralysing eventuality and his own insecurities about being accepted on his own account, he follows a career in horse transportation, working first as a clerk for a bloodstock agency and then as head travelling lad for an air cargo firm. In his spare time, of course, Grey rides as an amateur jockey in steeplechase races while supporting an addiction to piloting small planes.

I find this book too heavy-handed and slow moving. The suspense doesn't really start until at least half way through and I simply don't find Grey and the characters by whom he is surrounded that interesting. The love story is weak and the class war between Grey and Billy, an angry young man who accompanies Grey and the horses on some of their flights, simply isn't powerful enough to keep my interest.

On the up side, Flying Finish represents the first time that Francis introduces and explores a profession other than jockey. The level of his research/experience is impressive and, in a surprisingly clear way that does not interfere with the story, he gives his readers a detailed introduction to the ins and outs of flying aeroplanes. Francis would follow this pattern in many of his later novels, introducing us to such professions as wine expert, chef, architect, banker, gemologist and many others in equal detail.

I think it's one of the real strengths of the series.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Dick Francis

I finished Odds Against yesterday and came away amazed, yet again, at Dick Francis' skill as a writer. This is a great book and the climactic scene between hero Sid Halley and the four villains is absolutely, painfully, devastatingly effective.

It occurred to me, after I had read the final pages of the novel, that in all my years of being a Francis fan I have never actually heard the man's voice nor seen video of him. So I went to Google and checked him out. First, I found his own webpage (not surprisingly, www.dickfrancis.com) which is clean, clear and filled with interesting stuff, neatly presented. There are a couple of videotaped interviews on there but, unfortunately, nothing I saw in my brief perusal involved Francis in his prime: most were recent chats involving both Dick and his son Felix.

In one interview, however, Dick refers back to his worst riding moment, aboard a horse called Devon Loch in the Grand National steeplechase race at Aintree Racecourse in 1956. So I went to Youtube and found this:


It's a brief tribute to Francis shown on British television after his death and it shows the end of that race, which is the biggest steeplechase race of season (the Daytona 500 of British steeplechase racing, so to speak). Francis, a champion jockey at the time, is riding one of the co-favourites in the race, Devon Loch, which is owned by the Queen Mother. Francis and Devon Loch come off the last jump and the final turn with a five-length lead before devastation happens. It's amazing and painful to watch.

I watched that video several times with a pain in my stomach and I realised I had gained a little bit of an insight into how Francis, a man who otherwise led a charmed life, could make the pain his heroes feel (and they all have their own private torment) so real to the reader.

Then I looked further on Youtube and found a much less clear video of the entire race from 1956, my first viewing of an actual steeplechase race. It's just amazing to watch. Thirty or so horses start out and the pace is incredibly fast. Perhaps even more incredible, the race lasts almost seven minutes! I'm so used to watching horse races that last a minute or two but apparently steeplechases are much longer.

The experience has made me appreciate both Francis' achievements as a jockey and the action he describes in his books even more. I wish I had done this kind of research long ago.

Tags: Dick Francis

I'm not sure if you can plan a better Sunday evening: a great home-cooked dinner, a strong rye-and-ginger, Chantal Kreviazuk on the CD player and the Oscars on deck in about an hour. Life can be really good, even as I approach the frightening age of 45.

Chantal is belting out the tunes on her break-out disc, Under These Rocks and Stones, with it lyrical repetitions of "green apples" and "cotton candy" throughout the album. Her two early hits, "Wayne" and "Surrounded", are stirring happy memories of our recent encounter with Kreviazuk at the Fredericton Playhouse in a spectacular concert.

I can't say I've seen many (if any) of the movies that are up for Academy Awards tonight but I still love the show. A couple of years ago, Patti and I caught the broadcast with about 300 other people at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto, probably my favourite mode of Oscar watching! Tonight I'm looking forward to Steve Martin as host. Should be fun.

Meanwhile, I've moved on to Dick Francis' fourth novel, 1965's Odds Against. For Kicks was as good as advertised, featuring DF's first really cruel villain, but was a little heavy on the self-justification by protagonist Daniel Roke. Odds Against is significant because it first introduces Sid Halley, arguably Francis' most successful, most complex and most interesting hero. It also features one of the most memorable, horrifying scenes he wrote but I'll tell you more about that when I get to it. I'm still only about 70 pages in so there's lots more to come.

Halley is an ex-jockey, a champion, who had to give it up when he lost the use of one hand in a messy steeplechase accident. Scarred, both inside and out, Halley slowly works himself out of a deep depression to discover he's actually pretty good at the detection business. Maybe, just maybe, life is worth living after all, even if the life of a champion jockey is forever lost to him.

In Odds Against, Francis flexes his creative muscles while keeping the action galloping along. Halley proved so popular, meanwhile, that Francis brought him back in at least one later novel (Whip Hand), something he resisted doing with almost every other hero he created (for some reason, I think one other hero made a second appearance but I can't remember which: we'll figure it all out as I keep reading).

Tags: Dick Francis, Chantal Kreviazuk, Academy Awards, Oscars, Bloor Cinema

It's now been a month since British thriller writer Dick Francis passed away at age 89. In honour of his death, I have decided to re-read his entire collection of novels (more than 40 in total) from first to last. Though I've read every one of them before, often several times, I am trying this time to read them more slowly and more thoroughly, to appreciate the writing rather than simply getting caught up in the action.

I'm now on the third novel, For Kicks, and I have to admit: I haven't been very successful on the whole slowing down bit.

Dead Cert, Francis' first novel published in 1962, blew me away. The first ten pages are practically perfect —Francis launches the book in the middle of an intense steeple chase, adds a mysterious and deadly fall, introduces evidence of nefarious deeds, then manages to leave our mild-mannered hero all on his own to sort things out — and the rest of the book gallops along unrelentingly from there.

I can't imagine a more perfect opening salvo for a thriller writer and am in awe that this was Francis' first attempt at writing a novel. Amazing. Effortless. Perfect.

His second novel, Nerve, is almost as good. With a more complicated plot, it suffers only from the fact that the main character solves the mystery early and much of the second half of the book focuses on his campaign to bring the villain to justice. Here, Francis introduces his life-long interest in the psychology of evil while continuing to set first-rate thrillers against the background of the British horse racing industry.

I read and re-read the first part of Dead Cert, just to get clear in my mind what impressed me about it, but then got caught up in the plot and raced through the rest of the book. It took me longer to get into Nerve, mainly because I had a strong recollection of the intense suffering the hero endures and simply couldn't face it, but, once I was hooked, the pages flew past.

I have now stepped into the third novel, For Kicks, and am, once again, trying to force myself to go slow. In this book, Francis introduces his first protagonist who is not actually a jockey. Daniel Roke, an Australian horse breeder, agrees to take on an investigation on behalf of the English racing authorities simply for a change of scenery, going undercover as a stable lad to look into a new kind of doping.

With For Kicks, Francis delivers his third straight "cracker" of a novel. I wonder when I'll come across a weak link in his chain of mysteries.

Tags: 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.

Tags: Dick Francis