I first discovered Dick Francis when I began reading a copy of Banker left unguarded at a family gathering by Louis Massery, my late brother-in-law. I liked it so much that I began working through Francis' previous books, and then reading each new book he wrote. I loved how, despite being murder mysteries, the books had a gentleness to them. His male characters were strong, but not aggressive; cautious, but brave; and sweetly persistent in getting the girl.
As most all of his fans know, he started out as a jockey, becoming so successful that in 1953 he was chosen to ride the Queen Mother's horses in British races. Riding Devon Loch in the 1956 Grand National, the 35-year-old Francis was 50 yards from winning when the horse inexplicably went down. Some theorize that the horse was startled by the roar of the crowd; others thought he tried to jump a "phantom fence." Whatever the cause of the collapse, Francis' disappointment and injuries from previous falls made him hang up his racing career for good. He wrote an autobiography, and then began writing racing-related mysteries.
Several years ago, I interviewed Mr. Francis when he came here to Washington, DC, for a book tour. I met him in his suite at a ritzy downtown hotel. He was older than he looked on book jackets and disarmingly sweet--not at all what I had expected of a wildly successful murder mystery writer. He told me that he had never been educated, having dropped out of school to be a jockey. He said that he would write his books in a very rough fashion, and then his wife, Mary, who had a university degree, would fix them up.
In an obit appearing in the Daily Mail's online edition, Graham Lord, Francis' biographer, said that it was actually Mary, and not Dick Francis, who wrote the books. According to Lord:
Mary was a crucial part of the thriller-writing 'team'. Although partly paralysed by polio and suffering chronic asthma and bronchitis, she researched all the books - in the process becoming a computer expert, photographer, accountant, painter and wine buff, even qualifying as a pilot for the book Flying Finish.
Indeed, as his biographer, I am convinced that Francis (who was poorly educated and not at all literary) did not write the books himself. I am sure that they were written by his clever, literate, university-educated wife but published under his name because as a famous jockey he would sell more copies.
In 1980, Mary told me: 'Yes, Dick would like me to have all the credit for them, but believe me, 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.'
When I revealed the truth in my double biography of the Francises in 1999, the Mail on Sunday reported that Mary was 'evasive when asked bluntly whether she is the true author.
She said equivocally, "It is not exactly true to say that I write Dick's books ... I could get him to write you a letter and you would see he can write". The amount of sharing we do is, to my mind, sort of private. We would really like people not to press us too hard on this".' The truth is that Dick Francis hated writing and took little pleasure in the success of the books. His first love was horses and he once said: 'My life ended when I stopped racing.'
Several years ago, Dick Francis and Mary moved to the Cayman Islands. Mary died in 2000, and for several years, Dick did not write any more books. Recently, he began writing with his son, Felix. Their third collaboration, Even Money, came out in 2009. It centered on betting on horse racing, but also included a long-lost father, a wife with mental illness, and various other plots and subplots. The overly-busy story had a Dick Francis-like feel, but without Mary's influence, it just wasn't the same.
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