If you like Dick Francis you’ll love his Wild Horses, a novel featuring film director Thomas Lyon who is making a movie loosely based on a true life unsolved hanging death that scandalized the English racing world 25 years before. If you haven’t found Dick Francis then this is a great introduction to his novels.
All of Francis’s novels are linked somehow to the English horse racing world, whether the main character is a jockey or trainer, or a chef with a fine restaurant in the racing countryside or a financier who backed the syndication of a prime stallion for stud. Wild Horses is one of two where the characters are making a movie. (The other is Smokescreen set in South Africa.)
Synopsis
The novel starts with Thomas Lyon visiting an old family friend, Valentine, who is nearly dead of cancer. Delirious with pain, Valentine mistakes Thomas for a priest and confesses to killing “the Cornish boy”. Valentine is rambling and Thomas has no idea what he is talking about. Thomas befriends Valentine’s widowed sister, Dorothea, and helps her with her overbearing and pompous son, Paul. He also inherits all of Valentine’s books and papers.
Thomas’s movie, Unstable Times, is made from a successful novel that is rather dreamy and amorphous. Thomas forces the stuck up author to revise the story to make it more intense, adds in steamy scenes and paints Cibber as the villain who killed the girl and is trying his best to frame the husband for murder. Thomas’s movie is completely untrue to the novel or the historical situation. The author has a fit and so does the family of the real-life “Cibber”.
Thomas nearly loses his job as director, which would have finished his career, but by using the smarts that all of Francis’s heroes share, manages to keep his job. Someone attacks Dorothea and nearly knifes her, attacks the star of the movie, and finally attacks Thomas himself. Thomas figures out that the real life hanging so long ago and the fact he inherited the papers somehow are behind all the attacks.
Characters
Francis always does a great job with the primary male characters in his novels. They are smart, resourceful, not too constrained by rules, and driven to succeed. Our hero here, Thomas Lyon, fits the mold. He is climbing the Hollywood ladder with Unstable Times, and is working with a top sletar, top cinematographer, producer and several excellent supporting people. He brings his own vision of the story and adds elements that raise it from Hollywood schlock to a memorable film. For example, he wants the woman who ends up hung to have a dream sequence with wild horses on the beach. He manages to import horses from Norway and films a spectacular sequence with the stunt man standing on the wild horses as they stream out of the sunrise.
The side characters are also excellent, especially leading male actor Nash Rourke and doctor Robbie Gill. Dorothea Pannier also is well drawn. Even minor characters feel real.
Setting
Dick Francis always did thorough research and created realistic settings and back stories. No doubt he talked to several real life directors and producers to get the movie backdrop just right. It’s one of the traits that make his books so memorable. All his characters are a bit alike but we can separate them by the deep background and easily match each to the right book.
Writing
Overall Francis’s style is easy to follow, crisp with strong dialogue. What always impresses me from a technical perspective is how he slides in the back story / setting and does it so well that you end up feeling like an expert on the subject without ever being lectured.
I wish science fiction and fantasy authors would develop back story /setting skills like Dick Francis. (Don’t you get tired of all the techno mumble jumble about hyper this and gravity that? I do and it’s also a glaring weakness in almost all the books with a military setting.)
I’m a big Dick Francis fan and can only praise Wild Horses. Read it. It’s good.
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