The popular Dick Francis, who turns out a beautifully finished product year in and year out, adds to his already formidable list with "Trial Run."… Perhaps one reason for his reliability, and for his readers' delight in the product, is the fact that he discovered a dependable formula from the very beginning and has relentlessly pursued it. A Dick Francis novel, well written though it may be, is not going to have any great surprises….
In all the Francis novels, the hero has something to do with horse racing, and generally the steeplechase…. The Francis hero is an upholder of the stiff-upper-lip British traditions, and usually he is an upper-class type. He is very smart, laconic, moving easily among the upper crust and sharing their secret language. They recognize one another. He is an Arthurian knight, more Lancelot than Galahad, for he is not prissy and enjoys sex so long as the ground rules are observed. The Francis villains are unfailingly "common." Some of them may have upper-class pretensions, but a slip of the tongue, an act that only a cad would do, invariably betrays them. There can be something very inbred and snobbish in the Francis books.
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