1538. Forfeit by Dick Francis

Dick Francis was an award winning and prolific (and bestselling) crime writer, particularly during the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. In 2015, I reviewed one of his books, Come to Grief

, and rated that highly. Since then, I’ve usually been reading more contemporary writers, but then I stumbled across this one, Forfeit, published in 1969, and decided to have a look. I remain convinced that Francis knows how to write a good story. 

Francis particularly wrote about the horse racing scene, and this story took place surrounding a famous steeplechase event in England. Burt Chekov, a horseracing writer fell to his death from the seventh floor of his office window at his office. He was nearly dead drunk at the time, and his death was understood to be a suicide. But James Tyrone, a writer from a rival paper, The Blaze, was suspicious that there was an underlying gambling scandal that Chekov was about to uncover, and he became determined to find the truth of this matter. Meanwhile, Tyrone was also taking care of his severely handicapped wife. Just a couple years after their marriage, she contracted polio, and she became dependent on an iron lung machine without which she would die. He objected to putting his wife in an institution where she would merely be warehoused, but that required all of his funds, so he was always running short of cash.

 

Tyrone was a great protagonist who faced the great hazards of organized crime and a beautiful woman who seduced him as part of a blackmail scheme. Francis pulls together the various subplots to a most satisfactory end. I’d give it a 4/5 rating – definitely worth your time.

Come to Grief

I’ve once again dipped slightly into the past for this author. Dick Francis was a prolific writer, having penned 40 best-selling novels between 1957 and his death in 2010. Francis was an English steeplechase jockey who won over 350 races and was England’s champion jockey in the 1953-54 season. He retired to become a full-time writer. He actually won three Edgar Awards, including one for this novel, so there’s no doubt that this man knows how to write a crime novel. Come to Grief was published in 1996 and was one of a series of novels about his investigator and protagonist, Sid Halley.

In this book, Francis captured my interest in the first three sentences in which he introduced himself and announced that he put his famous and well-loved friend on trial, thus becoming a despicable character himself. Halley and his friend, Ellis Quint, were both retired jockeys of great fame, but Quint had gone on to become a nationally known sports broadcaster. From the outset, it seemed inevitable that Sid would triumph, but it was impossible to fathom how that might come about given the hurdles that were present because of the nature of the case, the character of Quint, and his Halley’s uncompromising ethics. The crimes were brutal, not because of human torture, although there was enough of that, but because of the ugly harm that was being done to animals, specifically race horses. Someone was chopping off the legs of these precious animals. How could Quint possibly have been responsible for such brutality.

Francis’ character development is what makes this work so outstanding. But, the plot was also binding, and there were surprises right to the last chapter. This books gets my strong recommendation.