Sunday, March 8, 2009

Silks by Dick Francis and Felix Francis

So here's the danger of allowing me to browse the "New Fiction" section in my local library.  I end up ignoring my work, the beautiful weather, a perfectly decent literary novel loaned to me by a coworker, the laundry, the insidious layer of god-knows-what creeping through my house and taking over every horizontal surface (papers? Legos? junk mail?), and I spend the weekend reading Dick Francis.

I love Dick Francis books.  I've loved them since I was in high school and my dad got me started on them.  (My dad, by the way, has read everything.)  They're very similar to each other, so it's difficult to remember the plots, though they all have something that stands out. My dad and I will discuss them as, "The one that started with the guy standing in the fountain," or "The one that ended with the main character chained to the steering wheel."  It's always interesting to me to see what exactly my brain chooses to remember from books I've read.  But that's another blog entirely.

A very smart and savvy author, Dianne Mott Davidson, who was here last year for the James River Writers conference, told me that Dick Francis did not actually write his books, that his wife did.  From what little I've read, it's true (or they, at the very least, collaborated), so it would make sense then that, since his wife's death, he is now writing with his son Felix.  I was interested to see if I could tell a difference. The last Dick Francis I read was Under Orders, a Sid Halley book I was disappointed in.  I loved the first three Sid Halley books, but the fourth just wasn't as good.  Maybe it needed help it didn't get from Mary Francis.

Anyway, on to Silks.  It was pretty good.  Good enough to devour in a 36 hour period, anyway. The main character is a barrister (British lawyer), and it was somewhat interesting to see the workings of the British legal system, though they were, I thought, over-explained. (Perhaps that was Felix?)  I was much more interested in the part about why race horses get nose bleeds and how their lungs work, but maybe that's what's left of my horse-crazy younger years showing.  

The characters were reasonably compelling and engaging.  The pace moved along well (except the over-explained law bits).  No one really did anything out of character or especially stupid.  Good, quick Dick Francis read.  And Felix.  Maybe it will be "the one with the guy with the baseball bat."

(Rated R: violence, language, sex)