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It may seem odd to call an internationally bestselling author underrated, so I won't. I'll call him underdiscussed.
Dick Francis is a former jockey and author of about forty books, all but two mystery/thrillers which involve horse racing. Like Barbara Michaels, his books mostly have different protagonists, though he wrote a few about an ex-jockey named Sid Halley. Though Francis is a better and more ambitious writer than Michaels, other traits he shares with her are a compulsive page-turning style and a tendency to make some form of specialized knowledge, history or craft a central part of the narrative. (They overlap with two books, Michaels' INTO THE DARKNESS and Francis' STRAIGHT, which both involve fine jewelry.)
These points which I mention are probably what anyone would think of if they've read a few of his books; also that he writes extremely well and convincingly about pain, primarily physical but also emotional; and that although one would think thrillers involving horse racing is a limited field, his books are often quite inventive and different from each other.
Something that I don't think gets noticed as much are the roles of women. His protagonists, who all narrate in the first person, are all men of more-or-less similar types: tough, manly without being obsessed with proving it, concerned with old-fashined values like courage and honor, stoic, intelligent but not intellectual. So the female characters will always be in supporting roles, and are often but not always the love interest.
They are often instrumental in assisting the hero as he solves the mystery or defeats the villain, but generally not by using physical force. As often, their role is more crucial in helping the hero with his psychological or emotional issues: sometimes by providing a good or bad example of how to live, sometimes in the more traditional role of providing a shoulder to lean on and a relationship which expands his emotional world. But though women are not usually central to the plot, they're often shown in far more interesting and unstereotyped roles than one would expect from a writer of male-centered semi-macho thrillers.
Dick Francis's wife died within the last year or so, and I don't think he's written anything since. It turns out that she did a lot of research which went into his books, from learning to fly to learning to paint, and was his collaborator to an unspecified extent; he said that her name could have appeared on the books as a co-writer, if she'd wanted it there. This seems a fairly common pattern, and I wish women were more willing in general to take credit for their work, but now that I know, I'll always think of her as the silent partner when I read the books.
I'll post on individual books later tonight, as I'd like to do a career overview for anyone who's never picked anything up by him.
Dick Francis is a former jockey and author of about forty books, all but two mystery/thrillers which involve horse racing. Like Barbara Michaels, his books mostly have different protagonists, though he wrote a few about an ex-jockey named Sid Halley. Though Francis is a better and more ambitious writer than Michaels, other traits he shares with her are a compulsive page-turning style and a tendency to make some form of specialized knowledge, history or craft a central part of the narrative. (They overlap with two books, Michaels' INTO THE DARKNESS and Francis' STRAIGHT, which both involve fine jewelry.)
These points which I mention are probably what anyone would think of if they've read a few of his books; also that he writes extremely well and convincingly about pain, primarily physical but also emotional; and that although one would think thrillers involving horse racing is a limited field, his books are often quite inventive and different from each other.
Something that I don't think gets noticed as much are the roles of women. His protagonists, who all narrate in the first person, are all men of more-or-less similar types: tough, manly without being obsessed with proving it, concerned with old-fashined values like courage and honor, stoic, intelligent but not intellectual. So the female characters will always be in supporting roles, and are often but not always the love interest.
They are often instrumental in assisting the hero as he solves the mystery or defeats the villain, but generally not by using physical force. As often, their role is more crucial in helping the hero with his psychological or emotional issues: sometimes by providing a good or bad example of how to live, sometimes in the more traditional role of providing a shoulder to lean on and a relationship which expands his emotional world. But though women are not usually central to the plot, they're often shown in far more interesting and unstereotyped roles than one would expect from a writer of male-centered semi-macho thrillers.
Dick Francis's wife died within the last year or so, and I don't think he's written anything since. It turns out that she did a lot of research which went into his books, from learning to fly to learning to paint, and was his collaborator to an unspecified extent; he said that her name could have appeared on the books as a co-writer, if she'd wanted it there. This seems a fairly common pattern, and I wish women were more willing in general to take credit for their work, but now that I know, I'll always think of her as the silent partner when I read the books.
I'll post on individual books later tonight, as I'd like to do a career overview for anyone who's never picked anything up by him.
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That's my favorite, though The Danger is a close second. I'm hopelessly in love with all of his main characters, and want to marry them. All of them.
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That is all.
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Tangent: Dorothy Dunnett mysteries
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Re: Tangent: Dorothy Dunnett mysteries
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Which would include me, for the reason you mentioned: I assumed that since I have little or no interest in horse racing (apart from the annual Triple Crown, and only if I happen to have the TV on), that Dick Francis would hold little thrall for me.
I look forward to your overview.
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1) "Why don't we get some nice young band to play the race, bring in the young people? How about those, you know, the Beatles?"
Except for the little details, I would never have known the book I was reading was 40 years old.
2) Especially in Whip Hand, Francis found his way pretty quickly to the basic conundrum of recurring detectives, which is "Who among the guilty would let them around, knowing they're detectives?"
3) I learned almost everything I know about Britain's weapons laws from the increasingly outlandish tools used to commit murder, guns and knives being mostly hard to acquire.
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I think I may have read them all, own most, and can only think of two or three that left me blah.