Wild Horses [Paperback]

Although the movie script, and the book it is taken from, uses none of the original names, the story is clearly one of a young woman found hanging in a horse stall nearly thirty years earlier. The book's author is constantly appalled at the liberties Lyon takes with his work and causes no end of complications. Her husband, accused of her murder, was never convicted. He and many others involved at the time threaten, cajole, beg, and whine, trying to keep the movie from being finished. Clearly, someone fears that the truth may come out.

In the end, Lyon does solve the decades old mystery, but not without taking a few licks himself. The movie is finished and we are told quite successfully, as it wins several Academy Awards. On the journey, Lyon has proven himself a good director, has made friends of many of the participants, and is himself quite satisfied with the result.

This is not a new book, but to me it was I just read it. Dick Francis is not a new writer. He has many books to his credit. This one is an excellent effort as was all of his books. Of course he was writing about something he is very good at, horse jump racing. His prime character in this story is a 16-hour a day working director of a movie about steeple jump racing.

Thomas Lyon is the director of 'Unstable Times', who solves two murders and several 26-year-old mysteries while director of the movie. He almost had his life ended when the writer, of 'UNSTABLE TIMES', and other people involved who didn't like what the movie implicated and took it very serious.

This is a good story of the work and people involved in making a movie. Just a good book for the information about the nitty gritty work involved in making a movie and how much work and how dangerous it can be.

Wild Horses is Dick Francis on top of his game. It stands as one of the highlights of the long and somewhat distinguished career of one of Britain's best-known mystery novelists.

The tale is that of Thomas Lyon, ex-jumps jockey and presently filmmaker. He's been signed on to make a movie based on a novel based on a twenty-six- year-old police case regarding the alleged suicide of a trainer's wife. In the small British racing world, Lyon and the trainer are connected through various channels, and Lyon, along with the film's reluctant producer O'Hara, idly speculate that maybe, in the making of the film, they might actually solve the case. As all this is going on, an old friend of Lyon's dies, leaving Lyon all of his racing-related books and ephemera. A number of others want to get their hands on this material, and will stop at nothing to do so, including viciously beating the man's elderly sister. Lyon realizes that everything's tied in a lot closer than it seems, and the chase is on.

Wild Horses has a readability factor that some of Francis' less consistent books lack. He puts everything in front of the reader in a non-nonsense fashion, adding enough deception to keep the reader wondering what's a clue and what's a falsity, throws in suspects by the score, and lets Lyon go on about making his movie. (Perhaps the fact that the sleuth not only has another job, but actually pays attention to it as the mystery is going on, is one of the book's strongest points; too often it seems amateur detectives suddenly find themselves with more than enough hours in the day when things get underway.) Them's good reads, folks!

A must for any fan of Francis (or any other writer of racing mysteries), and a good intro to him for other mystery readers who haven't yet discovered his work. ****