[LMB] Dick Francis titles

[Stewart Dean]

>
> Some samples: the sports
>> > writer with a 
>> > paralyzed wife; 
Forfeit
>> the jockey hunted by a psychopath who's
>> > terrorizing a 
>> > small town; 
>>     
Dead Cert
> "I inherited my brother's life. 
Straight (not one of his best, for all that these sentences strike to 
the heart)
I'd suggest the pair, Break-In and Bolt (which has a romance).  Bolt has 
an ending that, after many rereadings, still sends chills down my spine. 
A side character is a aging horse trainer, once a titan, now much 
reduced, though still trainng winners.  A madman has been killing his 
horses; he finally catches him and, though enfeebled by age, manages to 
kill the madmen with the veterinary tool (a bolt) that the madman's used 
to kill his horses.  The central character finds the two just after the 
trainer has done the deed and persuades him to tell the police it was an 
accident, he didn't mean to kill..  Bolt ends:
" [The policemen] saw, standing before them on the peat inside the 
stall, standing beside a dead intruder with intruder's deadly weapon 
shining with menace in the light, they saw an old thin man with 
disheveled white hair, with the dark freckles of age on his ancient 
forehead, with the pistol-whipping marks of dried blood on his cheek.
They saw, as the coroner would see, and the lawyers, and the press, the 
shaking deteriorating exterior, not the titan who still lived inside.
Wykeham [the old trainer] looked at Kinley [the horse he'd saved]; at 
the future, at the horse that could fly on the Downs, tail streaming, 
jumping like an angel to his destiny.
He looked at the policemen, and his eyes seemed full of sky
'It was an accident', he said"
.
A thing I meant to say about DF's characters...there's a definite 
similarity to Cazaril: the raw guts, the fey wildness at the sticking 
point, the resilient, unbending integrity, the grit

// Stewart Dean == Kingston, NY
// home: 845-336-4815  sdean at sdean.net
// work: 845-758-7475, sdean at bard.edu