Enquiry by Dick Francis

It is hard to round up enough superlatives to adequately discuss Dick Francis. Reading them back to back this way, though, I am discovering some patterns that I had never been aware of before.

I think I did mention in one recent post, Francis's men are one depressed bunch of guys. Kelly Hughes is no exception. He is despised by his family, a bunch of working class Welshmen, for forgetting his place and becoming something besides a hired hand on a dirt farm. Not only that - he went to university - none other than the prestigious London School of Economics. Sort of the reverse of Henry Grey's situation (Flying Finish). Then to compound the disaster of his life, his wife and baby daughter were killed in a car crash. A lot of baggage.

Still when he and the trainer he rides for are set up and "warned off" racing by a kangaroo court, Kelly becomes angry rather than more depressed and with the daughter of the self-important trainer sets out to figure out what is really going on.

Another observation that has gradually grown on me is that with the sweet young things that step in to help these depressed men - young is the keyword. Gene Hawkins in Blood Sport is nearly forty - and ends up promising to wait for his boss's sixteen year old daughter to turn twenty-one. Kelly Hughes isn't quite that old and Roberta isn't quite that young, but she is young enough that, as a twelve year old, she had fallen for him when he went to work as a jockey for her father, so we are talking about seven or eight years age difference at least. I'm going to have to keep an eye on this one.