1538. Forfeit by Dick Francis

Dick Francis was an award winning and prolific (and bestselling) crime writer, particularly during the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. In 2015, I reviewed one of his books, Come to Grief

, and rated that highly. Since then, I’ve usually been reading more contemporary writers, but then I stumbled across this one, Forfeit, published in 1969, and decided to have a look. I remain convinced that Francis knows how to write a good story. 

Francis particularly wrote about the horse racing scene, and this story took place surrounding a famous steeplechase event in England. Burt Chekov, a horseracing writer fell to his death from the seventh floor of his office window at his office. He was nearly dead drunk at the time, and his death was understood to be a suicide. But James Tyrone, a writer from a rival paper, The Blaze, was suspicious that there was an underlying gambling scandal that Chekov was about to uncover, and he became determined to find the truth of this matter. Meanwhile, Tyrone was also taking care of his severely handicapped wife. Just a couple years after their marriage, she contracted polio, and she became dependent on an iron lung machine without which she would die. He objected to putting his wife in an institution where she would merely be warehoused, but that required all of his funds, so he was always running short of cash.

 

Tyrone was a great protagonist who faced the great hazards of organized crime and a beautiful woman who seduced him as part of a blackmail scheme. Francis pulls together the various subplots to a most satisfactory end. I’d give it a 4/5 rating – definitely worth your time.