Fri 31 Jul 2015
Reviewed by Barry Gardner: JOHN BIRKETT – The Queen’s Mare.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
JOHN BIRKETT – The Queen’s Mare. Michael Rhineheart #2. Avon, paperback original; 1st printing, 1990.
Michael Rhineheart is a blue-collar type private detective operating in Louisville, Kentucky. (Maybe he’s the reason that Haskell Blevins had to flee to Pigeon Fork to hang up his shingle.) He has a young secretary named McGraw who doesn’t like to be called one and who passionately yearns to join Rhineheart in detecting and is also assisted when he needs it by a much older private detective named Farnsworth.
In this offering he is hired to act as go-between in the delivery of ransom money for a kidnapped mare and colt; but not just any mare and colt These are owned by one of the leading Bluegrass families, and are due to be part of an exhibition soon for the Queen of England.
The family has the obligatory strange members and twisty past, and it’s soon obvious that the problems revolve around that past, the family, or both. The aged matriarch who hired Rhineheart is ambivalent about it all, and has problems of her own. The overall impact of the tale was diminished severely for me by an ending that I couldn’t believe in.
I enjoyed the book while reading it, though. If Birkett isn’t in the top rank of PI writers, he nevertheless tells a good story, and the protagonists are likeable. People are perhaps a tad more willing to spill their guts on cue to our hero than reality would dictate, and there’s of course the obligatory personal friend on the police department, but he’s hardly alone in using (and over-using) these conventions.
I enjoyed the first Rhineheart book, The Last Private Eye (Avon, 1988) also.
Editorial Comment: These are the only two books by John Birkett in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV. The author died in 2009 in his early 70s.
July 31st, 2015 at 1:57 pm
I’m sure I have both of these, but I’m even more sure that I never read either of them. I’m not sure why, but perhaps because of the horse racing background, a sport of practically no interest to me.
July 31st, 2015 at 5:45 pm
Like you, horse racing just doesn’t interest me, which is probably why I’ve never read a Dick Francis novel, even though I hear that his wife was an excellent mystery writer.
July 31st, 2015 at 8:30 pm
I’m sure I know what you mean by that last remark!
August 1st, 2015 at 1:18 pm
Steve,
It was rumored Francis wife was the real brains behind the books, but unless she also wrote his correspondence I don’t buy it. I’m sure she contributed as did his son Felix who still writes, and she may well have helped significantly. Many writers have spouses who act as editor and even co-writer.
There is no real evidence Francis didn’t write his autobiography or the books though.
If you haven’t read Francis though, the horse-racing element is not always that much of the plot. In many it is a McGuffin with a few scenes along the way.
There are some damn good books whoever wrote them, which is the important thing.
August 2nd, 2015 at 11:44 am
“Yes, Dick would like me to have all the credit for them but believe me, Graham, it’s much better for everyone, including the readers, to think that he writes them because they’re taut, masculine books that might otherwise lose their credibility.”
— Mary Francis
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/dick-francis-thrillers-were-ghost-written-by-wife-743503.html
August 2nd, 2015 at 1:31 pm
Two more quotes from that article:
“I don’t think she wrote them entirely,” said Mr Lord yesterday. “What I’m getting at is that Mary certainly has contributed a great deal more than anyone’s ever previously suspected, and that Dick himself would like her to get very much more credit for the books.”
and
One part of the relationship is clear to Mr Lord – that it was Dick Francis who contributed all the know-how about racing and its skullduggery.
Which is about what I assumed, once the story began to come out.