James Price is the son of crime fiction critic and thriller writer Anthony Price, who reviewed many novels including Dick Francis thrillers for the Oxford Mail.
Don’t we always enjoy a recurring hero in crime fiction? Elmore Leonard’s Raylan Givens is one of my all-time favourites, a flawed knight in tarnished armour, but in the end the guy we’d want next to us in a tight spot. Another such figure is that great Dick Francis protagonist, the troubled jockey turned private investigator Sid Halley, who first appeared in Odds Against in 1965.
Halley had lost the use of use of his left hand in a riding accident whilst at the peak of his career, and struggled to come to terms with his disability, which eventual lead to an amputation. His next appearance in Whip Hand (1979) won his creator both the Gold Dagger and the Edgar, a record only equalled by John Le Carré
Dick’s son Felix, rather like a Renaissance painter, collaborated with and then carried on the family business, and has cleverly chose to feature an older Sid Halley, now with a newly transplanted hand, in his latest thriller Dark Horse in which Imogen Duffy, a young Irish female jockey is stalked by a violently narcissistic ex-boyfriend who is suddenly found dead, with a carving knife bearing Imogen’s fingerprints on the blade in his chest.
Imogen is inevitably charged with murder, but her surgeon father, who had treated Sid’s daughter, persuades the veteran investigator to abandon retirement and find out what really happened.
The descriptions of the racing meetings are as convincing as ever, but Francis also depicts the nagging self-doubt of the jockey who is only ever as good as his or her most recent results (and of course there is always the omnipresent fear of injury). Most impressive, however, is Francis’ ability to get inside the mind a of a female jockey making her way in the (still) very macho racing world.
