Dick Francis

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Dick Francis
Occupation	Novelist, retired jockey
Nationality	British
Writing period	1957-present
Genres	Crime fiction
Dick Francis.com Official website

Dick Francis CBE (born Richard Stanley Francis on 31 October 1920) is a British horse racing crime writer and retired jockey.

Early life

He was born in Lawrenny, south Wales, the son of a jockey and stable manager ^[1].

During World War II, he served in the Royal Air Force, piloting fighter and bomber aircraft, including the Spitfire.

Horse racing career

After leaving the RAF in 1946 he became a celebrity in the world of British National Hunt racing.^[1] He won over 350 races, becoming champion jockey in the 1953-54 season.^[1]

From 1953 to 1957 he was jockey to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. In 1957 he was forced to retire from racing as the result of a serious fall. His most famous moment as a jockey came while riding the Queen Mother's horse, Devon Loch, in the 1956 Grand National when the horse inexplicably fell when close to winning the race.

Writing career

Dick Francis has written forty-one international bestsellers and is widely claimed as one of the world’s best thriller writers. His first book was his autobiography, The Sport of Queens (1957), which led to him becoming the racing correspondent for the London Sunday Express, a position he held for 16 years. In 1962, he published his first thriller, Dead Cert, set in the world of racing. Subsequently, he regularly produced a novel a year for the next 38 years, missing only 1998 (during which he published a short-story collection). Although all his books were set against a background of horse racing, his heroes held a variety of jobs from artist (To the Hilt) to private investigator (Odds Against).

Francis is the only three-time recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for Best Novel, winning for Forfeit in 1970, Whip Hand in 1981, and Come to Grief in 1996. Also in 1976 he was given the Mystery Writer of America Grand Master Award, the highest honor bestowed by the MWA. In 2003 he was honored by being awarded the Gumshoe Awards' Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award.

Graham Lord's 1999 unauthorized biography, Dick Francis: A Racing Life, suggested that his books had in fact been written by Francis' wife, Mary. Whether true or not, by all accounts Mary did much of the research and editing of Francis' later novels and stories, and often worked collaboratively with her husband on each book's actual composition. After Mary's death in the year 2000, Francis wrote no new works until Under Orders (a racing term for when the horses are at the start and subject to the starter's orders), released in September 26, 2006. His next two books, Dead Heat in 2007 and Silks in 2008 were co-written by his son Felix.

Dick Francis' manager (and research assistant on the new books) is his son Felix Francis who left his post as a teacher of A Level Physics at Bloxham School in Oxfordshire in order to work for his father and who was the inspiration behind a leading character in the novel Twice Shy. His other son, Merrick, formerly a racehorse trainer, later ran his own horse transport business, thus inspiring the novel Driving Force.

While not universally true, a typical novel follows this basic premise:

• They are told through the eyes of one character in the first person.

• The narrators generally have some professional involvement in the racing world — jockey, trainer, owner.

• The location is often one of the centres of British racing, either Newmarket or Lambourn.

• The narrator going about their business, then strange deaths start to occur or strange scams which they investigate. Along the way, they find themselves as a murder target.

• Along the way, if they aren't already married, they meets a love interest and they get together.

• They bring the villains to justice.

Books

See also

• John Francome

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} The Sport of Queens

External links

• 2001 audio interview by Bill Thompson of Eye on Books, discussing the end of his writing.
• Official Dick Francis Website.
• Dick Francis Reading Group.