his crime novels—of which To the InHilt is the thirty-fifth—Dick Francis places admirable, sometimes even exemplary, heroes in unfamiliar and dangerous situations. Confronting a variety of intellectual, physical, and occasionally emotional challenges, the young men ultimately prevail: righting wrongs, exposing corruption, bringing murderers and other criminals to their reckoning. Having restored a portion of society to some semblance of normality, each of these men returns to life as he knew it. To a considerable extent, this basic plot outline is typical not only of Francis but of the crime or detective genre in general, so his novels are, to a degree, formulaic. Nevertheless, this former steeplechase jockey (all of his books feature horse racing) crafts distinctive plots with varied milieus and unexpected twists. Another reason he has maintained this freshness over the decades (he was.....
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