Creator / Dick Francis

"Crime to many is not crime but simply a way of life. If laws are inconvenient, ignore them, they don't apply to you."

Richard Stanley Francis CBE (31 October 1920 – 14 February 2010), better known as Dick Francis, was a British crime novelist whose works invariably had some connection with Horse Racing. Prior to becoming an author, Francis had himself been a successful jockey — winning 350 races, most notably on horses owned by HM the Queen Mother. However, his most famous race was a loss; in the 1956 Grand National on Devon Loch, he had a five-length lead going into the home stretch, only for the horse to unexpectedly jump in the air and fall on its stomach ^note  this gave rise to the phrase "to do a Devon Loch" to describe an act of failing to win at the last minute despite being in a seemingly unassailable position; it's used by British sports journalists to this day. After retiring from racing, he took up writing, initially with his autobiography. His first novel was published in 1962, following which he wrote a novel a year for the next 38 years.

The influence of his wife Mary (nee Brenchley) on his writing has been argued to be quite large — Dick himself described their efforts as teamwork, and it has since been confirmed by their son Felix that Mary did most of the research and they basically wrote the books together, with Felix helping out. After Mary's death in 2000, Dick wrote five more novels with Felix (who, unlike Mary, was credited as a co-author on four of them). After Dick's death in 2010, Felix has continued to write novels in the same vein under his own name.

For his work, Dick Francis was honoured by both the Crime Writers' Association and the Mystery Writers of America; one of his novels (Whip Hand, the second of his Sid Halley series) won the former's Gold Dagger, and three (Forfeit, Whip Hand, Come to Grief) won the latter's Edgar Award. A member of the Detection Club ^note  a short story of his features in the club's 1978 anthology Verdict of Thirteen, he was awarded an OBE in 1983 and upgraded to a CBE in 2000.

Works by Dick Francis

• Sid Halley series
  • Odds Against (1965)
  • Whip Hand (1979)
  • Come to Grief (1995)
  • Under Orders (2006)
  • Refusal (2013, written by Felix Francis)
  • Hands Down (2022, written by Felix Francis)
• Kit Fielding series
  • Break In (1985)
  • Bolt (1986)
• Standalone novels
  • Dead Cert (1962)
  • Nerve (1964)
  • For Kicks (1965)
  • Flying Finish (1966)
  • Blood Sport (1967)
  • Forfeit (1968)
  • Enquiry (1969)
  • Rat Race (1970)
  • Bonecrack (1971)
  • Smokescreen (1972)
  • Slay Ride (1973)
  • Knockdown (1974)
  • High Stakes (1975)
  • In the Frame (1976)
  • Risk (1977)
  • Trial Run (1978)
  • Reflex (1980)
  • Twice Shy (1981)
  • Banker (1982)
  • The Danger (1983)
  • Proof (1984)
  • Hot Money (1987)
  • The Edge (1988)
  • Straight (1989)
  • Longshot (1990)
  • Comeback (1991)
  • Driving Force (1992)
  • Decider (1993)
  • Wild Horses (1994)
  • To the Hilt (1996)
  • 10 LB. Penalty (1997)
  • Second Wind (1999)
  • Shattered (2000)
  • Dead Heat (2007, co-written with Felix Francis)
  • Silks (2008, co-written with Felix Francis)
  • Even Money (2009, co-written with Felix Francis)
  • Crossfire (2010, co-written with Felix Francis)
• Short story collections
  • Field of 13 (1998)
• Non-fiction
  • The Sport of Queens (1957)
  • A Jockey's Life (1986); later republished under the title Lester

Works by Felix Francis

• Jeff Hinkley series
  • Dick Francis's Damage (2014)
  • Front Runner: A Dick Francis Novel (2015)
  • Triple Crown: A Dick Francis Novel (2016)
• Standalone novels
  • Dick Francis's Gamble (2011)
  • Dick Francis's Bloodline (2012)
  • Pulse: A Dick Francis Novel (2017)
  • Crisis: A Dick Francis Novel (2018)
  • Guilty Not Guilty: A Dick Francis Novel (2019)
  • Iced: A Dick Francis Novel (2021)

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Works by Dick Francis provide examples of:

• The Alcoholic: Fred Collyer, the protagonist of the short story "The Gift".
  "Since leaving LaGuardia that morning he had drunk six beers, four brandies, one double Scotch (by mistake), and nearly three litres of bourbon."
• Always Murder: Averted — there are lots of significant non-murders in the books, often to provide a Plot-Triggering Death.
  • In The Edge, Derry Welfram is an enforcer of the Big Bad who dies of an ordinary coronary while being followed in the hopes of leading the jockey club to incriminating evidence.
  • The events of Proof are set into motion when several people are killed by a random accident — a car parked on top of a hill without the handbrake (parking brake) on goes down the hill and ploughs into a marquee where a party is taking place. One of the casualties was involved in a criminal operation so the police take advantage of his death to come on down.
  • The narrator's brother in Straight dies at the start following an accident.
  • The villain's mother in Come to Grief commits suicide early in the book.
• Amoral Afrikaner: The Big Bad and The Dragon in Forfeit are sadistic former South African Secret Police members. Smokescreen averts this; while it is set in South Africa and the racial politics of the region are critically discussed a few times, the villain is not a native of that country.
• Arab Oil Sheikh: Proof features an unnamed oil-rich Arabian prince interested in horse races. The narrator (a bartender) avoids interacting with him due to expecting that the Sheikh will express virulent disapproval of his work in the alcohol business. Other characters who do interact with the Sheikh describe him as a Fat Bastard and Straw Misogynist who looks down on everyone and is so paranoid about assassination that he makes his three armed bodyguards stand at his side in the dentist's office. He dies in a random car accident early in the book.
• Artificial Limbs: Sid Halley, whose riding career was ended when he lost a hand in a particularly bad fall, is sporting one in Come to Grief. In a later novel, Thomas Forsyth in Crossfire has an artificial foot as a result of injuries sustained while serving in Afghanistan.
• Asshole Victim: Toby Woodley, the Immoral Journalist in Bloodline, is murdered in a racecourse car park (the identity of his murderer and their motive for killing him is not revealed until the climax). Few are saddened by his passing, and some people express surprise that the narrator, who had good reason to dislike him, administered CPR to the guy until the ambulance crew arrived and declared him to be dead.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Henri Nanterre, the villain in Bolt, is trying to intimidate a business partner. When physical threats against said partner and his wife fail, he arranges to have two racehorses owned by the wife killed. Or so everyone thinks until the Twist Ending.
• The Bartender: Tony Beach in Proof is a wine merchant and bartender for private parties.
• Batman Gambit: Ian Pembroke sets up one of these in the climax of Hot Money in order to prove which member of his family is the murderer; it relies on a piece of misinformation being spread via his father's three ex-wives.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Lord Gowrey is a complicated example in Enquiry in that it isn't his own lies that he's trying to believe, but when he's blackmailed into turning an enquiry over an honest mistake into a Kangaroo Court, he at first resists, then pounces on the first (falsified) evidence that he finds, convincing himself that it's true so he can give in to the blackmailer without persecuting someone he knows is innocent.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Large families have scores of issues in multiple books, including Decider and Hot Money.
• Blackmail: Used every now and again, and not just by the main villains; sometimes, a supporting character or even a hero does it. Sometimes, it backfires on the blackmailer.
  • In Reflex, racing photographer George Millace discovers various crimes and scams, but rather than expose the wrongdoers he blackmails them for donations to the Injured Jockeys Fund and tells them to cease and desist. One such victim turns on him and murders him, which is why he's a Posthumous Character.
  • In Bloodline, Immoral Journalist Toby Woodley sends blackmail letters to people who he suspects of wrongdoing; the demand is for a relatively small amount of money (£200), and if the victim actually pays up, Toby sees that as proof of their guilt and then sends a second letter demanding more money. As with George Millace above, this gets him killed after one of his victims works out that he's the blackmailer and murders him — and then starts blackmailing a couple of Toby's other victims for a lot more money than Toby had demanded of them, which is what gives him away.
• Born in the Saddle: Multiple characters come from families that fit this trope, as do many supporting characters. Averted, though, in Comeback when the protagonist is the son of a jockey but was raised in a totally different environment because his mother married someone from outside the racing fraternity after his father's death when he was a small child.
• …But I Play One on TV: An In-Universe example in Smokescreen where the protagonist, Edward Lincoln, is a movie actor who usually plays the hero. Over the course of the book, he becomes one of these for real after reluctantly agreeing to look into a problem for an old family friend who, to his distress, has become senile to the point where she's confusing him with the characters he plays on the screen.
• Chekhov's Gun: Or rather, Chekhov's penknife in Proof — given as a present to the protagonist early on, it comes in handy during the climax.
• Cool Horse: Appears less frequently than one would think. Sandcastle (Banker) is an exception.
• Creepy Uncle: In Wild Horses, Jackson Wells reveals that his daughter is not immune to the sinister sexual intentions of his brother (who once tried to have an orgy with Jackson's first wife).
  Jackson: Ridley disgusts me but Lucy still thinks he's a laugh, which won't last much longer as he'd have his hand up her skirt by now except that I've told her always to wear jeans[.]
• The Creon: In the last act of 10 LB. Penalty, George Juliard becomes cabinet minister for Agriculture, Food, & Fisheries, handling the job in a way that makes him viewed as a potential successor to the Prime Minister. However, while he is an ambitious politician, he has enough loyalty to his boss to downplay his profile to avoid making the rest of the government look bad. He also tries to defend the Prime Minister during a cabinet crisis until the minister chooses to resign and gives George his blessing to seek to be his successor.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Several villains. At the end of High Stakes, for example, the protagonist tells his (grossly corrupt) former trainer that with his talent, he could have found fame and fortune by racing horses honestly, rather than cooking the books to increase fees and rigging race after race, pointing out that all he ended up with was short-term money and the ruination of his career. Unsurprisingly, this goes right over the trainer's head.
• Determinator: Sid Halley is a prime example, but nearly every single protagonist manages to succeed by sheer teeth-gritting refusal to acknowledge when they are beaten. Terrified? Yes. Expecting failure? Yes. Exhausted and in physical pain? Yep. Aware of their limitations? Certainly. Resigned to eventual defeat? Quite possibly. Going to quit while still breathing? NEVER.
• Doomed Predecessor:
  • For Kicks has the narrator hired to investigate some suspected chicanery at horse races, after a previous outside investigator (a racing journalist) died in a car accident. As the events of the novel continue, he begins to realize that it probably wasn't a car accident. After being captured by the villains, he (truthfully) tells that that he's told someone else about what he found, and that killing him won't save them, but they reply that the previous man said the same thing (untruthfully) to try and save his life, so they think he's lying too.
  • Flying Finish has a rare example where the doomed predecessor actually appears for a while and interacts with the narrator before suffering this fate. One of the narrators coworkers mysteriously disappears while on an overseas flight, raising his suspicions about what's going on. Later, after being kidnapped, he finds a message that very coworker scratched into the wall while being held prisoner, and when they try to make him Dig Your Own Grave, he finds his friends murdered body at the bottom of the grave, and would have been buried with him if he hadn't escaped.
• Early-Bird Cameo: A meta example — Twice Shy (1981) was dedicated to Dick's son Felix who, like one of the main characters, was a physics teacher; Felix had helped to devise the bookie-beating computer programme that was that novel's MacGuffin. Felix went on to help his parents write some of the later novels (getting openly credited as a co-writer for most of the ones written after Mary's death), and would continue to write novels in the same vein after Dick died in 2010.
• Embarrassing First Name: Kit Fielding's real name is "Christmas" (he and his twin Holly having been born on December 25th). No wonder he prefers to go by "Kit".
  • Played with in the case of the unpleasant Orkney Swayle in Proof. He doesn't mind his unusual first name but is embarrassed by the reason his parents chose it — it's where he was conceived.
• Expecting Someone Taller: Inverted with quite a few of the jockey characters. For example, most people who meet Kit Fielding (the narrator of Break In and Bolt) for the first time admit that they were expecting someone shorter. Kit is shorter than average, but he's nowhere near the stereotypical midget most people picture when they think of a jockey.
• Explosive Stupidity: In Hot Money, the villain's first attempt to blow up Malcolm Pembroke and his house doesn't do the trick. In the climax, the bomber returns with a second bomb to finish the job. Unfortunately, this bomb is made with a highly unstable explosive as the detonator, so when she trips on a bit of debris and falls, the bomb goes off.
• Expy: Francis's protagonists are generally moderately humble, down-to-earth, decent men who are quite competent at their trades, who are faced with unexpected difficulties that they eventually work through.
• Extruded Book Product: A minor example — since Dick's death in 2010, his son Felix (who was credited as a co-writer for Dick's last four novels) has written novels in the same style at a rate of one a year, usually with the subtitle "A Dick Francis Novel".
• Feuding Families: The Allardecks and the Fieldings have an enmity that has been going on for centuries^note Kit even lampshades it by calling the two families "Capulets and Montagues". The younger generation does their best to end it, with Holly Fielding and Bobby Allardeck falling in love and getting married. However, Bobby's father Maynard continues to regard the feud as Serious Business, and uses his position as a Jockey Club steward to pursue a personal vendetta against Holly's brother Kit, a professional jockey (and the narrator of Break In and Bolt). This ultimately scuppers Maynard's ambition to secure himself a knighthood, as evidence of his less savoury business activities (in the form of a dossier kept by Kit as an insurance policy should Maynard actively threaten his livelihood) falls into the wrong hands; it's not Kit's fault that this happens, but Maynard unsurprisingly holds him responsible.
• First Person Smart Ass: Averted, for the most part, even though all of his mystery novels are written in first person point-of-view. Snark, where present, is delivered in an understated Brit fashion.
• Forging the Will: Discussed in Hot Money. The protagonist's very rich father is considering changing his will, and the protagonist tells him how to get the new will registered with the Probate Office, so that if the father dies suddenly (which is quite possible since someone is trying to kill him and has already killed at least one other family member), it will be impossible for anyone to produce a fake will in order to claim all of the money for themselves. This is followed by a case of lying about what's in the will, as the protagonist subsequently tells the rest of his family (one of whom is the murderer) that his father has inserted a clause into his will stating that his entire fortune will go to charity in the event of him dying in suspicious circumstances; it's not true, but when the father inevitably hears of this, his response is to wonder why he hadn't thought of doing that for real.
• Happily Failed Suicide: In the short story "Haig's Death" (which can be found in Field of 13, Dick's only short story collection), Jasper Billington-Innes is facing financial ruin. He resolves to kill himself and is about to drive his car into a tree — but when he turns the car on, the car phone plays a message from his wife telling him that most of the problems that had been plaguing him have been resolved. This causes him to abruptly change his mind.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?: Inverted in the endings of For Kicks and Proof, where the respective narrator and Deuteragonist are caught by the villains. Without being prompted, each man truthfully claims that other people know where he is and who he suspects. Both times, the villains think that it's just a self-preserving lie.
• Hero of Another Story: Two of the colleagues of the anti-kidnapping expert protagonist in The Danger are in South America, negotiating for the release of an oil executive whose kidnapping they believe was an inside job. It's never revealed who was behind that kidnapping, or even whether they got the executive back safely.
• Horsing Around: While some novels feature a Cool Horse, most stick close to realism — horses bolt, run off, buck, bite, and (quite frequently) throw their riders to the ground, to be stomped on by their herdmates.
• I Remember Because...: In Break In, When Kit decides to use the past misdeeds of a Corrupt Corporate Executive to enact some Laser-Guided Karma, he recalls how he earlier heard a brief list of companies the man took advantage of. He only remembers the name of one of those companies (Purfleet Electronics), and only because he once spent a vacation in the town of Purfleet.
• The Jeeves:
  • Thomas, the chauffeur from Break In and its sequel Bolt, is a polite, intelligently-spoken man who is fiercely loyal to his employer, willing to help threaten the Big Bad of the later book and mentions that he once took a course about methods to keep your employer from getting kidnapped.
  • Owen in High Stakes is a workplace helper for a toy inventor rather than a butler or valet, but he fills this role a bit with a sense of unassuming, soft-spoken loyalty.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: quite often, as Francis enjoys Character Development. A good example is Evan, the arrogant movie director in Smokescreen, who forces the narrator (an actor in the film he's making) to go through a lot of discomfort during filming. This is mostly done in order to satisfy a petty grudge, although the two become Fire-Forged Friends by the end.
• Karma Houdini: Depressingly often, for the sake of realism. The Big Bad of Flying Finish, and several of his henchmen presumably escape to a non-extradition country, despite being responsible for at least three murders, and feeling little remorse. Most of the villains of the first two Sid Halley books get off with slaps on the wrist despite e being involved in massive corruption and sadistic bearings. The Dragon of Slay Ride is still at large at the end of the novel despite having, among other things, beaten a pregnant woman to the point of causing a miscarriage. None of the Never My Fault, Smug Snake villains of Risk are arrested after delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to the hero, and embezzling quite a bit of money. On the other hand, he's just as likely to choose Pay Evil unto Evil.
• Kindly Vet: Appears frequently, as to be expected in stories involving horse racing — most notably a whole clinic's worth in Comeback. Several are only kind to four-legged creatures, and less sympathetic to humans. One or two also subvert this and are revealed to be villainous characters.
• Kissing Cousins: Nerve, in an mostly unrequited fashion. Mostly.
• Leave Behind a Pistol: The Big Bad of Dead Cert is overpowered, told that the police are about to arrive and have evidence against him, and that he'll very likely be hanged, while his family will suffer disgrace, then is left alone with his pistol and explicitly told it will be quicker. He uses it as the police pull up outside.
• The Man Behind the Man:
  • Political advisor A.L. Wyvern in 10-lb Penalty aspires to be the power behind the throne in the highest-echelons of British politics, desiring power without responsibility.
  • In The Edge, early on there is talk about an immensely corrupt racing stable, the owner of which was warned off for life, with certain events causing the jockey club to wonder if their current nemesis, Julius Apollo Filmer, might have been involved with that racket but escaped detection. They are correct, and use it to warn him off in addition to the criminal charges he faces at the end.
  • In Forfeit it is clear that shady bookmaker Charlie Boston is working to do a bit of race-rigging, but also becomes clear that he himself has a superior sticking to the shadows, the mysterious Mr. Vjoersterod.
  • In Comeback the narrator comes into conflict with some corrupt bloodstock agents, but eventually comes to suspect that their leader isn't the real mastermind and that someone else in their circle of acquaintances is pulling the strings while remaining above suspicion. He's right.
• Master of Disguise: Played for laughs by Chris Young, the private detective hired by the narrator in To the Hilt who even disguises himself when it's not really necessary; even the named partner in his detective agency is actually him in disguise. Subverted by Andrew Douglas, the kidnapping expert (and narrator) in The Danger; though he has some colleagues who are this, he himself prefers to rely on a mild form of Obfuscating Stupidity in order to avoid drawing attention to himself.
• Most Writers Are Writers: Writers are the protagonists of Forfeit (specifically a racing columnist, which Francis was for years) and Longshot. Additionally, the protagonists of the short stories "The Gift" and "Collision Course" are, respectively, a racing columnist and a newspaper editor.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Happens now and then, such as in the short story "Dead on Red" when the crony who helped the villain arrange the assassination finds his admiration for said villain slowly dissipating and realizes that, deep down, he liked the man he helped kill.
• Non-Idle Rich: As to be expected with Francis's heroes (see Expy and Determinator) but particularly in Flying Finish, Hot Money, To The Hilt and High Stakes.
• Not Me This Time: In Bolt the main villain of the story is behind a lot of things, including attempted murder, but he wasn't the one who's been killing the horses. Unusually for this trope, he actually does try to take credit for that, rather than deny it, due to feeling it would make him seem more serious and threatening towards his enemies.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Happens with the main villains of several books, such as Forfeit, Rat Race and, Decider, suffering horrible deaths, others suffering humiliating arrests and/or ruinations, and, in his most graphic example of this trope, one Big Bad even being inadvertently castrated (his testicles are surgically amputated as the result of a severe Groin Attack from the Sidekick). Even some books where the Big Bad pulls a Karma Houdini, such as Flying Finish, have The Dragon get killed.
• Persona Non Grata: In some books, there is insufficient evidence against the bad guys for prosecution under Brtish law. However, this does not stop the Jockey Club (who essentially ran British horse racing at the time when Francis was writing) from "warning off" the offenders, meaning they are banned from any establishment, racecourse or other facility licensed by the club and other members of the club are not permitted to associate with them, essentially de facto banning them from the entire sport, industry and culture as a punishment for their actions.
• Posthumous Character: A few.
  • George Millace is stated to have just died at the start of Reflex, but is nevertheless a significant character.
  • Larry Trent dies, along with several others, in the accident that kicks off the plot of Proof.
  • Greville Franklin, narrator Derek's brother in Straight, is unconscious and dying as a result of an accident at the beginning of the story.
  • Chris Haig in the short story "Haig's Death" is an interesting variant, as the reader is told at the start that he's going to die, although he doesn't actually do so until a crucial moment in the race around which the story revolves, with the rest of the story exploring how his death affected the outcome of the race, and by extension the lives of the other characters.
• Practically Different Generations: In Straight, Derek Franklin is over twenty years younger than his brother Greville and was born after their parents retired and gave up the lifestyle Greville was raised in.
  By the time I was born, he was away at university, building a life of his own. By the time I was six, he had married, by the time I was ten, he'd divorced.
• Psychic Powers: Kit Fielding and his twin sister (Break In, Bolt) share a telepathic bond.
• Psycho for Hire: several appear throughout his books, such as Billy in Flying Finish and the railway saboteur in The Edge.
• Recurring Character: Although most of Francis' works were stand-alones, he had two recurring protagonists: Kit Fielding (from Break In and Bolt), and most notably Sid Halley, who appeared in four books: Odds Against, Whip Hand, Come to Grief and Under Orders; the first three of which all won an Edgar Award for Best Novel. Halley has also appeared in two novels by Dick's son Felix, namely Refusal and Hands Down. Felix has also used a recurring protagonist, investigator Jeff Hinkley, in three novels.
• The Resenter: It would be difficult to name a book which doesn't have at least one obsessively resentful character, often in the role of a Big Bad or a Red Herring.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Occasionally occurs.
  • The Danger is about a series of kidnappings, all connected to the horse racing world. Although the victims are all human, the kidnapping of horses is discussed, with characters remarking that this has been done. That novel was published in 1983, the year in which Shergar was horse-napped.
  • The short story "Dead on Red" ends with the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise in March 1987.
• Sad Clown: In Nerve, one of the victims of Malicious Slander is always joking "like Pagliacci" in a failed attempt to act unperturbed.
• Shown Their Work: Constantly — both in the frequently-appearing racing-centric horse material, and in the details of various trades examined in different books (wine merchant in Proof, pilot in Flying Finish, jeweller in Straight, photography in Reflex, film-making in Smokescreen and Wild Horses, etc). Dick's wife Mary did plenty of research, at one point even gaining a pilot's licence.
• Show Within a Show: The narrator of Wild Horses is a film director who is making a movie called Unstable Times which has a horse racing theme. This includes a day's shooting at an actual racecourse; to make the racing look as authentic as possible, the colours worn by the winning jockey are subsequently used in scenes set prior to the race. The epilogue states that the film (based on an in-universe novel inspired by in-universe real events) got nominated for four Oscars, and won two of them.
• Small Role, Big Impact: On several occasions, the main character might have died and/or lost to the Big Bad if not for the action of a minor character, such as a mine employee in Smokescreen insisting that he hadn't noticed Ed Lincoln leaving the mine, prompting a search which saved his life after he'd been left in there to die. Or Badass Bystander Jacek. in Dead Heat who kills a murderous henchman with a fish filleter (while being shot in the shoulder himself) during the climax.
• Sidekick: Tick-Tock, in Nerve, qualifies, almost to the point of Plucky Comic Relief. So does the hired detective in To The Hilt.
• Snake Oil Salesman: Calder Jackson in Banker.
• Someone to Remember Him By: Tragically subverted in Slay Ride. A murder victim leaves behind a pregnant wife but she gets beaten up by the villains while searching for evidence a couple of weeks later, and suffers a miscarriage.
• Starving Artist: Subverted in Shattered, where Gerry Logan does quite well at his business. Played straight in Longshot (up to and including the leaking garret), while in To the Hilt and In the Frame, the artists live unconventional lives but are far from financially strapped. In contrast to these is Reflex, where the art (photography) is purely a hobby for Philip Nore.
• Sympathetic Adulterer: A couple.
  • James Tyrone in Forfeit, to an extent — although it helps that he's the narrator and so can justify his actions (namely, he has occasional affairs because physical intimacy with his wife is impossible due to her disability) directly to the reader.
  • There's also the narrator's married lover in Bloodline whose husband is an abusive Jerkass, but she won't leave him because he's rich, and she's become accustomed to the lifestyle that goes with that.
• Tap on the Head: Generally averted - characters who are knocked out wake up disoriented and in pain.
• This Explains So Much: The short story "Song for Mona" features the eponymous stable worker and her social-climbing Antagonistic Offspring daughter Joanie, who obsessively tries to cut Mona out of her life and keep people from knowing about her origins. At the end of the story, Mona's friends find a newspaper article mentioning that Joanie's father was convicted of child rape when she was seven (whether she was his victim is unclear) and comment that "this explains a lot".
• Twist Ending: Bolt ends with Henri Nanterre foiled by the heroes. But it turns out that, Big Bad thought he undoubtedly was, he wasn't the one who killed the Princess's horses, even though he boasted of having done so; Kit Fielding, the narrator, finds incontrovertible evidence that he was in another country on the night two of them were killed. Turns out, the horse-killer was a man with a personal grudge against Kit, and he killed the horses because Kit, a champion jockey, had ridden them to victory in the past and had been due to ride one of them in the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
• Villainous BSoD: Quite a few of the villains undergo them but standouts include Uncle George in Dead Cert who, as the hero eludes his men (and has sneaked into his base) goes into a bloodthirsty rant screaming for them to find and kill him, and Julius Filmer in The Edge who is described as turning gray and heavily sweating for several minutes as the Jockey Club reveal the mountain of evidence they've gathered against him, which will be enough to see him banned for life, and sent to jail for a long time.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Several of them, although the heroes are sometimes aware of their villainy from the start, even if no-one else is.
  • Maurice Kemp-Lorre in Nerve is seen as a dazzling TV personality and great sport and racing authority, but makes a habit of completely destroying the careers of up-coming jockeys out of simple spite and jealousy.
  • The villain of Slay Ride is a minor national hero due to having been a resistance fighter against the Nazis as a young man.
  • Vic Vincent in Knockdown is considered a very talented, charming and scrupulous bloodstock agent by all of his clients, the general public and plenty of trainers, but is always looking to scam some extra money out of his clients and sabotage competitors. His secret employer Pauli Teskla fits this even better, as Vic's fellow agents at least mostly recognize him for who he is, while Pauli is considered as generally scrupulous and above suspicion.
  • Snake Oil Salesman and multiple murderer Calder Jackson in Banker.
  • Maynard Allardeck from Break In and Bolt is seen as a fair and generous racing authority when really he's a Corrupt Corporate Executive and obsessive Social Climber who has an unhealthy grudge against the narrator's family, in addition to which he tries to goad his own son into killing someone.
  • Julius Apollo Filmer is seen as pleasant social company and just another horse owner by his peers, while the Jockey Club knows him as a man who blackmails and threatens people to get great horses and will kill if his social position is threatened.
  • Carey Hewett in Comeback is seen as a benevolent figure and archetypal Kindly Vet plagued by misfortune when he's really a cold-blooded schemer who's been murdering animals as part of an Insurance Fraud scam, and is remorselessly willing to ruin the livelihoods and end the lives of people who see him as a friend in order to cover his tracks.
  • In Driving Force Tigwood is seen as a jerk by people, but is respected as a charitable man who provides a valuable service. In fact he sadistically relishes destroying both horses and people.
  • In Come to Grief, Ellis Quint is a well-liked TV show host and ex-jockey who charms everyone around him and does some nice human interest stuff on his TV show. He also has violent urges that lead him to amputate the feet of living horses (which he also covers on his show to get higher ratings) and beat up a man investigating him. although does ultimately draw the line at murder and save the life of a man investigating him at the end of the day.
  • The killer in Under Orders is seen as a pleasant amateur rider and aristocrat.
  • Oliver Chadwick in Crisis is considered to be a pillar of society and renowned trainer, but he allowed his sons to sexually abuse his daughter for years, and covered it up while at the same time blackmailing them into doing whatever he wanted with that information.
• Wanted a Son Instead: In Hot Money, one of the narrator's sisters-in-law wants a son badly, resents her two daughters, and is driving her husband to the edge of suicide by bullying him over having a vasectomy before they could conceive a third kid.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Clare Shillingford, the narrator's twin sister in Bloodline, is a respected jockey whose apparent suicide early on kicks off the plot. Turns out, there was much that her brother didn't know about her. The same could also be said for the woman he starts seeing during the course of the story, who is killed in a hit-and-run.
• What You Are in the Dark: In Knockdown, the Big Bad is knocked unconscious in a fight with the narrator and lies helpless. The narrator has a perfect opportunity to kill the man who has tried to ruin his livelihood and just killed his brother, and can easily make it look like he inflicted the fatal blow in self-defence during the struggle. Instead, he restrains the villain, calls the police, and then cries as the Bittersweet Ending sets in for him.
• Worthless Foreign Degree: One minor character in Dead Heat is a pot scrubber from the Czech Republic who eventually turns out to have been an actual chef back home and is promoted to this job again after saving his bosses life at the end.
• Write What You Know: Francis was a top horse racing jockey in the 1950s. All his books have some sort of link to horse racing.
• You Go, Girl!: Dr. Chris Rankin, the narrator of Pulse, is the first (and so far only) female protagonist in the books.