DICK FRANCIS – Odds Against. Michael Joseph, UK, hardcover, 1965. Harper & Row, US, hardcover, 1965. Berkley X-1370, US, paperback, 1967. Reprinted many times since.

   In most of his books, Dick Francis uses an ordinary man (usually connected with the racing world) as his protagonist, caught up in events that are so overwhelming and out of control that he must make heroic efforts to sort them out. But in Odds Against, Sid Halley has a job as a detective — the obvious choice for a tough man to right the world’s wrongs.

   He’s been doing the work for two years, and when he’s shot (on page one of the story), he realizes that a bullet in the guts is his first step to liberation from being of “no use to anyone, least of all himself.” He was a champion steeplechase jockey, that’s what makes him tough. A racing accident lost him the use of his hand and self-respect simultaneously.

   The action breaks from the starting gate and blasts over the hurdles of intrigue, menace, and crime. Halley is cadged by his shrewd and loving father-in-law into confronting Howard Kraye, “a full-blown, powerful, dangerous, big time crook.”

   On the track he encounters murder, mayhem, plastic bombs, and torture. But he endures, in some part to regain his self respect, and in some part because he believes in racing, the sport, and in putting it right. A fascinating chase through an empty racecourse defies the villain. In the end, despite his tragedy, Sid Halley sees himself as a detective and as a man.

   Dick Francis was so taken with the characters in this book that he went on to use them in a television series, The Racing Game (shown on Public Broadcasting). A second Sid Halley novel, Whip Hand, won the British Gold Dagger A ward in 1979 and another Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America.

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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
   

       The Sid Halley series —

   by Dick Francis …

Odds Against (1965)
Whip Hand (1979)
Come to Grief (1995)
Under Orders (2006)

   by Felix Francis …

Refusal (2013)
Hands Down (2022)

DICK FRANCIS – Blood Sport. Michael Joseph, UK, hardcover, 1967. Harper & Row, US, hardcover. 1968. Berkley, US, paperback, 1969. Reprinted many times since.

   From the winning world of British steeplechasing (where he was Champion Jockey in 1954), Dick Francis moved effortlessly into crime fiction with his first novel, Dead Cert, in 1962, and continues to be a front-runner. He has written twenty-some excellent thrillers full of old-fashioned moral polarity with strains of humor. These “adventure stories” (as Francis calls them) have amazing plots of clever evilness and feature nonrecurring heroes familiar with the racing game.

   Flawed, uninvolved, and soulless, each central character finds the value of vulnerability and returns to the land of the living through courage and love. As a central theme, it can be compared to that of the works of Ross Macdonald. As critic John Leonard said, “Not to read Dick Francis because you don’t like horses is like not reading Dostoevsky because you don’t like God.”

   In Blood Sport, death lurks on a simple Sunday sail on the Thames. An American visitor is almost drowned, and his rescuer is convinced that it wasn’t simply an accident. Gene Hawkins, the rescuer and hero, is an English civil servant, a “screener” who checks employees in secret-sensitive government jobs, His training permits him to spot details that make “accidents” phony, and his knowledge of guns and listening devices comes in handy.

   The rescued man asks for help in locating a stolen horse that has just been bought for a huge price. Hawkins is relieved to use his vacation time to hunt for missing horses, because he is despondent, filled with a “fat black slug of depression.” This is the only part of his character that doesn’t ring true-after all, it’s only a failed love affair.

   The pace picks up, and the scene changes to the U.S.A. From the farms of Kentucky, the trail is followed to Jackson, Wyoming. Along the way. Hawkins gets people together for some psychological reconditioning and exposes a bloodline scam as the scene shifts to Santa Barbara, Las Vegas, and Kingman, Arizona. The U.S. tour is fast moving, and Francis docs not dwell on local-color background, especially not to make any points. He just gives the graphic, journalistic details of a place that push the story along.

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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

GEORGE FOY – Asia Rip. Viking, hardcover, 1964. Pocket, paperback, 1985.

   The highly evocative title of this novel comes from one of the shoal areas off the coast of Cape Cod, an area worked by the rugged men of the North Atlantic fishing industry. George Foy sets his impressive debut mystery among these men and the corrupt individuals on land who control the industry.

   Lars Larsen joins the search for his friend Joe Sciacca when the latter fails to return from a fishing run. Later he is asked to continue to investigate by Sciacca’s widow, Marie. When the pregnant Marie is also murdered, Larsen finds himself with a murder rap on his head, and a need for vengeance in his heart.

   Foy’s well-wrought plot features a lot of bloody action as Larsen traces the link between organized crime and the fishing industry. Much of the action includes feats of unbelievable derring-do by Foy’s hero. Not your average fisherman, he is a former Harvard man and drug-runner. He is also the kind of central character who keeps the reader involved and believing even as he scales the beams and girders of a massive railroad bridge with an injured and infected shoulder.

   George Foy has worked as a journalist covering the fishing industry. This background lends great authenticity to his first mystery/adventure novel. He is also a-fine storyteller.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

JACK FOXX – Freebooty. Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1976.

   Jack Foxx is a pseudonym used by Bill Pronzini for four Foxx novels written in the 1970s. Two are action/ adventure stories featuring Singapore bush pilot Dan Connell — The Jade Figurine (1972) and Dead Run (1975); a third, Wildfire ( 1978), is a thriller about a small California logging community menaced by both a trio of dangerous criminals and a forest fire.

   Freebooty, a historical mystery, is very different in tone from the other tautly written, action-oriented Foxx novels. This is not to say that there isn’t plenty of action and suspense, but Freebooty‘s style is gentler, evoking an earlier age, and it is spiced with frequent, delightful humor.

   Fergus O’Hara and his wife, Hattie, arrive in San Francisco in 1863 en route to the port city of Stockton, where they suspect the members of a bandit gang who have been terrorizing coaches of the Adams Express Company are hiding out. As O’Hara explains, his wife is not an operative of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, as he is, but frequently assists him in his inquiries, “women being able to obtain information in places men cannot.”

   Before the O’Haras board the steamer Freebooty for the inland Journey, Fergus makes the acquaintance of Horace T. Goatleg, an obese man with patently suspicious motives; encounters an articulate and ribald parrot (one of the most memorable characters in a cast of outstanding ones); witnesses a near-riot on the Barbary Coast; finds a murdered man in an alley; and sustains minor injuries himself, including being half drowned by a shower of beer.

   Needless to say, all of the above events tie in to further goings–on aboard the steamer. And as the O’Haras — an effective team –investigate them, their initial purposes take a series of twists and turns, leading to a final revelation that is sure to leave the reader both surprised and amused.

   Pronzini has a firm grasp of historical fact, and he blends it skillfully into his narrative, capturing the tenor of the times without allowing detail to slow the pace of his story. This is an entertaining novel, well plotted and full of engaging characters.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

FREDERICK FORSYTH – The Odessa File. Hutchinson, UK, hardcover, 1972. Viking, US, hardcover, 1972. Bantam, US, paperback, 1974. Reprinted many times since.

   In The Odessa File, crime reporter Peter Miller finds the diary of a survivor of the Riga Concentration Camp. Miller, an extremely able journalist and a German of the postwar generation, is stunned to discover the horrors of the camp, and he sets out to track down the camp’s commandant, Eduard Roschmann (a real figure, whose story is accurately reported by Forsyth).

   Roschmarm is reported to be living comfortably under a new identity somewhere in Germany.

   In his search for the Butcher of Riga, Miller uncovers Odessa. a secret organization of former SS members. which is supported by the gold and jewels they took from the Jews in the concentration camps. Its aims are to aid former Nazis in returning to positions of influence in Germany and to further neo-Nazi propaganda. The anti-Nazi underground is powerful in the Germany of 1963, when this story takes place, and Miller is up against the biggest challenge of his career.

   German officials who are charged with prosecuting war criminals now only want to forget; Miller gets no help from them. The Israelis want to make use of him to thwart the production of an Odessa-designed guidance system that will supposedly enable Egyptian missiles to carry bubonic plague into Israel; to them, Miller is expendable.

   This tense and fascinating story reads like fact, and it is with the factual that Forsyth is at his best; he can make the assembling of a bomb in a hotel room as riveting as the best chase scene. His totally fictional characters are less sure than those based on real individuals, but Miller is a sympathetic hero.

   Forsyth’s other thrillers are The Dogs of War ( 1974) and The Devil’s Alternative (1979). He has also written mainstream novel, The Shepherd (1974), and a nonfiction book, The Biafra Story (1977).

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

FREDERICK FORSYTH – No Comebacks. Hutchinson, UK, hardcover, 1982 Viking, US, hardcover, 1982. Bantam, US, paperback, 1983. Reprinted many times since.

   The ten stories gathered here carry out the same theme as Forsyth’s novels, detailing the work of competent professional men who are single-mindedly committed to achieving their goals. Forsyth details their preparations for their missions with loving thoroughness, and follows their plans through to their logical conclusions.

   Some of his heroes succeed; some don’t. But if they don’t, it is because of some strange quirk that the hero could not have foreseen. More often than not, human frailty is what produces the splendid final twists in a number of the stories.

   “No Comebacks” is the cleverest example of this: The _signs of what is to happen to city of London “golden-boy tycoon” Mark Sanderson are obvious all along, yet the ironic climax is still surprising and leaves us with a satisfied smile. In “There Are No Snakes in Ireland” (which won the MW A Edgar for Best Short Story of 1983), it is the bigotry of certain Irish (in this case against an Indian student named Harkishan Ram Lal) that proves to be the true villain. As in this award-winning story, Forsyth also used his experiences while living in Ireland in “Sharp Practice,” a tale of a highly unusual poker game on a train. And in “A Careful Man,” an individual whose meticulousness affected his family in life does so even from the grave.

   These stories arc more human than Forsyth’s novels, the characters more memorable as people, rather than technicians, and the tension runs just as high as in the author’s longer works.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

FREDERICK FORSYTH – The Day of the Jackal. Viking, hardcover, 1971. Bantam, paperback, 1972. Reprinted many times. Film: UK, 1973. TV series: Peacock, 2024- .

   As a Reuters correspondent, Frederick Forsyth reported from London, Paris, and East Berlin in the Sixties, and he brings to his fictional works the expected objectivity and thoroughness of a talented reporter. Against a background of real events and real people, he places both his fictional heroes and antiheroes: professionals in their fields who arc impeccable in carrying out their jobs and arc governed by unshakable commitments to their own internal standards.

   The heroes frequently combat established but morally corrupt government agencies, and their victories over them come about through preparation and planning. There is a great deal of motion in Forsyth’s work, and the scene shifts frequently between the heroes and the antiheroes, creating a tension that is sustained until the last page.

   The Day of the Jackal is Forsyth’s best-known and most meticulously drawn suspense tale. Seeking the best of professional killers to take over from their own bunglers, French dissidents intent on assassinating Charles de Gaulle hire the Jackal. Working alone, the Jackal makes painstaking preparations to obtain each essential piece of equipment from the appropriate craftsmen, whom he either gives a nodding respect, views with silent contempt, or occasionally, disposes of.

   In counterpoint to the Jackal’ activities are scenes in which the authorities work to uncover the plot, and when Commissaire Claude Lebel, “the best detective in France,” is brought in on the case, the contest becomes an even match.

   Forsyth’s skill is such that, despite the Jackal’s morally unacceptable line of work, we feel sympathy for the character. His integrity and total commitment to his internal standards are commendable — regardless of what those standards are.

   And the chess game between these ultimate professionals — which takes them back and forth across Europe and the English Channel — is a joy to behold. The game grows tenser and tenser, until its climax — and then Forsyth gives us one more superb twist.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

RICHARD FORREST – A Child’s Garden of Death. Lyon & Bea Wentworth #1. Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1975. Pocket, paperback, 1977. Dell, paperback, 1982.

   Take one children’s-book writer who is also a hot-airballooning enthusiast; add his fictional creations, the Wobblies, and his politician wife, plus his best friend from Korean War days, now police chief in their small Connecticut town. These staple ingredients of Richard Forrest’s series about Lyon Wentworth add up to an intriguing mix-even before the element of murder enters.

   In this first entry in the series — whose titles are variations on well-known children’s books — Lyon is called in by buddy Rocco Herbert to help solve an unusual type of killing: a thirty-year-old murder of a man, woman, and child whose bodies are uncovered by a bulldozer at a construction site. Rocco often relies on his friend’s “unusual kind of mind,” but this case is particularly painful to the writer. His own daughter was killed by a hit-and-run driver some years ago, and he and his wife have yet to come to terms with their loss.

   Lyon’s investigation — which he frequently discusses with his imaginary friends, the Wobblies — takes him back to World War II and into a reconstruction of the life of a Jewish family who fled Hitler’s Germany only to find horrors in the new world. And the resolution of the case brings a measure of peace to the Wentworths. An excellent and sensitive novel whose serious theme is leavened by a wry good humor.

   Other titles featuring Lyon Wentworth: The Wizard of Death (1977), Death Through the Looking Glass (1978), The Death in the Willows (1979), The Death at Yew Corner (1980), and Death Under the Lilacs (1985).

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
   

NOTE: The series has continued on to include the following titles:

7. Death On the Mississippi (1989)
8. The Pied Piper of Death (1997)
9. Death in the Secret Garden (2004)
10. Death At King Arthur’s Court (2005)

C. S. FORESTER – Payment Deferred. Little Brown, hardcover, 1942. Reprinted many times, including Bantam #816, paperback, 1951.

   Payment Deferred is not a mystery. It is, rather, a stunning tour de force detailing “the perfect crime,” and its devastating aftermath on a working-class British family. Everything is in the telling.

   Will Marble and his family exist rather drearily on his income as a clerk at a bank. When a long-lost relative arrives from the colonies (Africa) with a fortune in cash and a sad story about having no other living relatives, Mr. Marble seizes the moment. He murders the boy, buries him in the backyard, and doubles the fortune through a series of crooked financial manipulations. He becomes a man of wealth and station. He has committed the perfect murder and has gone unpunished. All seems right with the world.

   What follows is a tale of retribution visited on Mr. Marble, his wife, and ultimately his children. The family, never close, begins to fall apart. The daughter, embarrassed by her parents’ common background, turns her back on the family (if not their newfound wealth) and leaves home. The son, bought off with expensive gifts and enrollment in the public school system, is both unloved and unloving. Mrs. Marble, discovering her husband’s terrible secret, is forced to share his nightmare world of fear and suspicion. Mr. Marble, forever brooding, sits by an open window refusing to leave home and maintains a constant vigil on the unmarked grave. His drinking, always a problem, gets worse. A blackmailing neighbor bleeds him financially. The family seems farthest apart at those times spent together.

   Forester’s prose is first-rate and his characterizations haunting. And the ending is guaranteed to surprise, with just the right fanciful touch to make it a perfect ironic counterpoint to the somber tone of the rest of the novel.

   C. S. Forester’s fame rests on his later, non-criminous writings, in particular his series of sea adventures featuring Captain Horatio Hornblower, which remain in print to the present. Several films have been made from his novels, among them the 1942 MGM production of Payment Deferred (starring Charles Laughton) and the 1951 Humphrey Bogart/Katharine Hepburn film The African Queen.

   His only other crime novel, Plain Murder, was published as a paperback original by Dell in 1954.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

LESLIE FORD – Ill Met by Moonlight. Colonel Primrose & Grace Latham #2. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1938. Dell #6, paperback, mapback edition, 1943.  Popular Library, paperback, 1964.

   Leslie Ford (a pseudonym of Zenith Brown. who also wrote as David Frame,  has often been accused of being one of the leading practitioners of the “had-I-but-known” school. and it is true that a great many of these leading and tension-spoiling statements appear in her novels. However, shortsighted critics have overlooked her carefully delineated exploration of life among people who are not too different from the average reader except in the fact that, through familial associations, political affinity, or geographic accident, they invite more than their fair share of murder and well-bred mayhem.

   This is the second adventure of Colonel John T. Primrose and Sergeant Phineas Buck, one in which the unlikely but highly successful combination of retired officer and retired enlisted man is teared with a thirty-eight-year-old widow, Grace Latham.

   Grace is of a distinguished Georgetown family, and her elegant home forms the backdrop for many of the books in this series. Ill Met by Moonlight takes place in another setting — April Harbor, Maryland, a summer playground for an inbred group of upper-crust families, where Grace and her relatives have been vacationing for years. Primrose and Buck are guests at Grace’s cottage when she finds a neighbor dead of carbon-monoxide poisoning in the garage next door.

   An old romance, a troubled marriage, a new love affair, and relationships with the folks in the neighboring town are all woven together in this engrossing and charming tale of love and murder.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.