Dick Francis/Ridley Pearson

One of my favorite authors, Dick Francis, died on February 14 of this year, at age eighty-nine, at his home in the Caribbean. All his stories have to do with horses, mainly those at the racetrack. All the novels were best sellers, too. Usually, I can hardly put them down as I read them. But with the latest few titles, they got even better. His son Felix helped write those and the research (or could he just know all that stuff already?) in fields other than horseracing adds a greater depth to the plots. Felix indicates on the Net that he will continue such stories, like those of his “extraordinary” father. Some books I give away but Dick Francis’s I keep. They will stay in the family, I trust.

The titles of Dick Francis’s mysteries do not easily identify just which story they tell, such as Even Money, Proof, or High Stakes. But they are clever titles and while you’re reading them, they suit the stories perfectly. I see no other way for it. The Case of the (whatever) is not the way to go.

However, I will say this about his characters. Didn’t Dick know some decent women still exist? The females in his stories appear what a large segment of the population calls indecent. Times have changed, of course, but couldn’t some real ladies go to the racetrack and perhaps witness the murder, or the theft, or the doping of a horse, without using foul language, or having a sordid past and/or present? Why should there be so much loose living, on the part of females in these books? Such is bad enough in the male characters but not every male gets this sort of attention. Realism may be the reason, of course, but realism also says decent people do exist.

This same criticism fits the novels of another of my favorite authors, Ridley Pearson, a real master of suspense. His books with the setting of Idaho’s Sun Valley area are outstanding in this regard. And how smart he is! I assume that when a writer does research seriously, he remembers what he learned during that effort. That may be true, or it may not be. Anyway, while reading Pearson, you do get to thinking about what you’re learning, then do you remember it? I daresay we need reminding to remember most of what we learned.

But I recall something most striking in one of the Francises’ books, information about how horses themselves brought drugs from South America into the country and got through customs without detection of the drugs. Also about the danger of eating undercooked kidney beans. These stories were really good ones, because I learned something, not necessarily about horseracing itself. Their next novel is due out in August.

Pearson has just been touring for his latest children’s book, but I hope that means he finished the next one for us before he left to travel, and that it will be out in the next few months. If you’ll look him up, you’ll read that Pearson works on several manuscripts simultaneously—even on two of his mystery novels. That puts my reading twelve books at the same time in the pale, doesn’t it?

I highly recommend both the Francises' recent books and Pearson's Killer series, if you’re after suspense. The latter includes Killer Weekend; Killer View; and Killer Summer.

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