Having emerged from the Victorian murk and fog of The Meaning of Night, the overwhelming sensuousness of Ladies Paradise, the creepiness of Woman in Black, and currently tackling the astringency of the latest Margaret Atwood, I felt an overwhelming desire to read something comforting and non-intellectual and give the little grey cells a night off.
Readers of my blog entry on childhood reading when I said I loved reading about ballet and wanted to be a ballerina (5' 9" size 8 feet? I don't think so) and my passion for books about ponies and riding (have never ridden in my life - well, just once and I fell off), will therefore understand perfectly my saying that I have read every single book Dick Francis has written. They are all set in the racing world, about which I know absolutely nothing and, having spent a corporate day out at the Derby once and being bored to tears, have no desire to further my knowledge of same.
There is no logical reason, therefore, why I should love these books but I do. I suppose the basic storyline, murder, detection, rescue of heroine, happy ending (well in nearly all) is a standard comfort read. The hero in every single book is exactly the same and must be Dick Francis himself when he was young, hale and hearty and rode horses for a living. He is always a sea green incorruptible in a world full of crooked trainers and jockeys, and sometimes, a bit of a bore, but always wins through. The villains are formulaic and, as in Midsomer Murders, you always have at least three murders after the first one. All of this set against a backdrop of weighing in rooms, stables and horse boxes, an environment totally alien to this city girl.
There was a strong rumour that Mrs Francis had a hand in writing these stories and after she died, he stopped writing, a fact seized on by the press as proof of the truth of this story. Of course, he might just have been devastated at the loss of his wife after some 50 years but this did not seem to cross the minds of the tabloid hacks.But now after a gap of several years he is back and I immediately rushed out to get the latest and will be sitting tonight with my feet up, stirrup cup in hand, totally chilling out.
