True to Formula Francis is Great Fun

Dick Francis, the author of forty-four mysteries placed mostly within or around the world of English steeplechasing, every single one of which I’ve read at least once, died last February at the age of eighty-nine. Every fall since I can remember, I have waited for the annual installment of the Francis mystery and I was worried about how I would fill my autumnal, perennial need for Francis’ guaranteed delivery of a good, old-fashioned mystery. I need not have worried: Francis’s son, Felix Francis, has taken over the mantle of horse-racing mystery fulfillment. Felix helped his father research many of the best of the Dick Francis novels and assisted in the writing of the last three. Crossfire, which came out this fall and which I read in one sitting over the weekend, is the final collaboration between father and son. Judging by son by the book, all I can say is that Felix is well-set to carry on in his father’s formulaic but fabulous story-telling tradition.

Crossfire begins in Afghanistan. Thomas Forsyth is a captain in the English army, one who “had taken to service life like the proverbial duck to water….The army had been much more to me than just a job….it had been all I had known for fifteen years and I loved it.” But his chosen career is cut short when a roadside bomb almost takes his life. Forsyth is sent home to Lambourn to recuperate with his cold and distant mother, a celebrated trainer of steeplechase winners, and his never-loved stepfather, her third husband. Forsyth picks up on tension in the homestead, unrelated to his own problems, and when one of his mother’s horses finishes last in a race he should easily have won, Forsyth finds himself wanting to help, in any way he can.

Crossfire contains all of the necessary Francis mystery elements including a brave, independent, and solitary hero; a background slew of horses and horse people; a rich landscape of English countryside; a love interest; physical and mental punishment of the protagonist, which he, heroically of course, overcomes; and a finale that is blood-pumping, justice-serving, and deeply satisfying. As long as Felix sticks to the formula, I can be happily reassured that my annual forays into the mysteries, agonies, and joys of English horse racing will continue, unabated, into the foreseeable future.