| Title | : | Reflex |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0425206955 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780425206959 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 304 |
| Publication | : | First published October 7, 1980 |
| Awards | : | CWA Silver Dagger (1980) |
Reflex Reviews
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Philip Nore is a professional jockey and an amateur photographer, and it's the latter interest that gets him into trouble in this novel. Nore was acquainted with George Millace, a very good sports photographer who often frequented the race courses where Nore rode. Millace has recently died in an auto accident and then, to add insult to injury, someone has burglarized and trashed his house while his wife and family were attending his funeral.
There seems no larger significance to these incidents until someone returns to the house and assaults Millace's widow, demanding to know where the safe is. The poor woman has no safe and, as far as she knows, neither did her husband. But it's clear that Millace apparently possessed something that someone considers to be a potential threat. Given his occupation as a photographer, it's not a huge leap to imagine that he might have had photographs that could pose a threat to someone else.
Philip Nore steps in to assist the widow and in the process discovers what appears to be her husband's junk box. It contains some scraps of exposed film and other items that are not immediately identifiable. Curious, Nore begins to experiment with the items in his own darkroom, and once he does, he puts himself directly in the sights of some very dangerous people who will stop at nothing to protect their secrets.
This is a fairly typical Dick Francis novel and readers of the series will immediately recognize Philip Nore as the prototypical Francis protagonist. It's a good book, although not among Francis's best. In part this is because he spends a great deal of time in the novel describing the technical aspects of what Nore is doing in his darkroom to uncover Millace's secrets. Francis clearly did a lot of research in this respect and was apparently determined to get everything he had learned into the book. The problem is that is slows the pace of the novel, sometimes at crucial points, and the book would have been better if he had dealt with this material more concisely. -
Warning!!! Fanboy rating !
I’ve been reading and re-reading the novels of Dick Francis since the early 1990’s and I’m hardly objective when it comes to judging their worth. I am aware that many critics consider him a ‘one trick pony’ who somehow stumbled over a succesful formula for writing murder mysteries set in and around the racing world, and then applied ‘rinse and repeat’ for about forty more novels written in the same manner, with the same type of characters and the same type of plot. Yet for me they are more comfort reads than guilty pleasure, as sure a thing to pick me up when I’m blue as a P G Wodehouse romp through a country manor.
My all time favorite remains Whip Hand , which is also the first one I read, before the formula became apparent. It’s due for a re-read, but what I wanted to point out is that Reflex comes very close on the heels of number one in my preferences. Francis must have been on a good roll, as I noticed the two books were published in the same year (1981). In support of my rating I make note of :
- there is actual steeplechase racing in the book, as Philip Nore, the protagonist, is still active on the racetrack as an amateur jockey
- by now Dick Francis became aware that he needed to diversify his set-ups with other passions / interests and other avenues of investigation into the murders. In Reflex this hobby horse is photography, which plays right up into my own interests in the subject.
- the plot is less linear and predictable than usual, as there are multiple avenues of investigation and more than one adversary / puzzle to be solved
- there is a romantic complication, treated as usual with understated intensity and delicacy of touch (I’m starting to give credit to the rumours that the wife of the author was involved in one form or another in the production of his novels)
Briefly, the novel starts with Philip Nore being asked to throw off a race by a venal owner with the tacit acceptance of the horse’s trainer. Simultaneously, Philip tries to help a fellow jockey whose father died recently in a suspicious car crash. This man, George Millace, was one of the best racing photographers, a passion that Philip shares as an enthusiast amateur who likes to carry his camera everywhere he goes in the hope he will stumble on a good subject or a good trick of the light. The son and widow of Millace are soon dealing with aggravation as their house is burgled first and then set on fire. It looks like somebody is looking for damaging images that the dead man was using to blackmail the crooks who can usually be found wherever apparently easy money attract crowds of the general public. A third storyline has Philip visiting his terminally ill grandmother and being required to find out a sister he never even knew he had.
Philip is everything I have come to expect from a Dick Francis hero : a bit of a loner, self-reliant and perseverent, whipsmart yet modest, with a strong inner compass about right and wrong, even as he admits that making a living in the racing world sometimes requires compromise. He’s got a fine sense of humour and an easy, laidback demeanour that makes people underestimate him at their own peril. A difficult childhood spent in various improvised foster homes as his teenage mother is chasing drugs and parties at the height of the Flower Power rage, turns Philip in compensation into a seriousminded and independent adult who knows how to find happiness in the simple things in life, like running over fences at breakneck speed.
Most people think, when they’re young, that they’re going to the top of their chosen world, and that the climb up is only a formality. Without that faith, I suppose, they might never start. Somewhere on the way they lift their eyes to the summit and know they aren’t going to reach it; and happiness then is looking down and enjoying the view they’ve got, not envying the one they haven’t.
Philip knows he will never be the best jockey out there, but he is willing to give it his best, for as long as he is allowed to. But as he cannot accept to cheat as he is required, he needs a fallback option. This may come from the photography that he has until now considered just an expensive hobby. This hobby may be turned into a profitable career, or it may terminate his life in a brutal manner, as he accidentally comes in possession of the late George Millace compromising images. These photographs are cleverly hidden in plain sight, as underexposed film or junk prints full black or full white, or transparent plastic. The quest of Philip to reveal the secret in the throwaway box of the dead photographer was probably the most interesting part of the novel for me, as I had some personal experience with developing film and printing out on paper in my own bathroon laboratory, back before digital made all this stuff obsolete. I was also reminded of the movie Blow Up by Michelangelor Antonioni, another story woven around a crime and an investigative photographer. Beside the familiarity with the equipment and the techniques, I have also shared in Philip’s worries about the prospects of making money from my hobby:
Everyone took photographs, every family had a camera, the whole Western world was awash in photographers ... and to make a living at it one had to be exceptionally good. One also had to work exceptionally hard.
and in another place:
I would never be a salesman.
Taking photographs for a living, I thought ruefully, would find me starving within a week.
I think I’ll hang on to my day job for a while longer...
Coming back to the novel, the romance when it blooms may be a little abrupt, but again, I know it can happen in this unplanned and often irrational way. I could not find it in me to be grumpy or coldly analytical about Philip putting his heart at risk:
It began in friendship and progressed to passion. Ended in breathlessness and laughter, sank to murmurs and sleep.
If I were to find something to criticize about the plot, it is the fact that I could spot the bad guys a mile off, another drawback of reading too many of the Francis novels. Almost all his fictional bad guys are cast from the same mould, which makes me wonder sometimes if there is any basis in reality, some bully that marked his early years or his later career so strongly that he goes back to the master copy in every book he writes:
A bully boy on the march, power hungry and complacent, a trampler of little men.
With this image of the quinetessential bully I come to my last quote, and one of the explanations of the appeal the books of Dick Francis still hold for me: he believes in the power of good men and women to stand up and defeat the takers and the violent and the ruthless who believe the world belongs to the wolves:
Most people’s lives, I thought, weren’t a matter of world affairs, but of the problems right beside them. Not concerned portentously with saving mankind, but with creating local order: in small checks and balances.
Neither my life nor George Millace’s would ever sway the fate of nations, but our actions could change the lives of individuals: and they have done that.
Recommended to readers as yet unfamiliar with the novels of Dick Francis as a good gateway drug, and to the fans as one of his better offerings. -
Philip Nore is a jockey,who also has an interest in photography.He is summoned by his dying grandmother,who had always treated his late mother harshly.
His grandmother drops a bombshell,Philip has a sister.He,on the other hand has been unaware of this,all his life.Now,he has to find that sister.
George Millace is the father of Philip's friend,Steve.He is an ace photographer but not a particularly scrupluous one.Blackmail,through his photographs is his side business.
After he dies suddenly,his house is burgled and Philip finds himself in danger from the people the dead man was blackmailing.
The book has familiar Francis ingredients,but I'm very fond of it as it was the very first Francis I ever read.It was an Urdu translation in a magazine and I wouldn't have discovered one of my favourite writers,had it not been for that translation. -
Read many, many years ago! Today I'm venturing into the audiobook, performed
by Simon Pebble, one of my favorite narrators!
Stay tuned.... -
I've said it before and here I am saying it again: nobody writes candy mysteries like Francis. His protagonists are likable, the villains appropriately dislikable, and you always learn something. The formula is simple and consistently adhered to, but the books are not the worse for it. This is a fine example of the form.
The formula is pretty simple. The genial and easygoing 30ish hero stumbles onto dark conspiracies in the racing world. He's beaten up, but bravely faces down the villains. He narrowly escapes, bringing down their plot and winning a girl at the same time. The occupation and conspiracy vary from novel to novel, but always there's a new bit of insider knowledge that helps lend the novel a ring of authenticity: the chemistry of photography, magnetic tapes from computers, the complexities of flying by instruments.
I've read them all at least three times and, while the names don't stick in my head, I get a flash of the protagonist, the villain, the occupation, and maybe the set-piece battle by the end of the first page. "Oh right, the photographer! There's coloured smudges and bizarre developing chemicals, and blackmail."
This time, though, I set out to study the craft of the book. What words does Francis use to paint a scene? Why those words? What patterns can I detect? My notes comprise the rest of this "review". I doubt they'll surprise anyone who's studied literature or been a fiction writer, but it's all been eye-opening to me.
I began paying attention to sentence length. It varies, as it should--lots of sentences the same length and structure are dull. He's fond of stitching short observations together into a longer sentence. Here's the opening paragraph:Winded and coughing, I lay on one elbow and spat out a mouthful of grass and mud. The horse I'd been riding raised its weight off my ankle, scrambled untidily to its feet and departed at an unfeeling gallop. I waited for things to settle: chest heaving, bones still rattling from the bang, sense of balance recovering from a thirty-mile-an-hour somersault and a few tumbling rolls. No harm done. Nothing broken. Just another fall.
Lots of small observations, but only a few short sentences. Generally he finds ways to string the short observations into longer sentences:He soared around the whole thing with bursting joie-de-vivre, even to the extent of passing the favorite on the run-in, and we came back to bear hugs from the blue hair (for the benefit of television) and an offer to me of a spare ride in the fifth race, from a worried-looking small-time trainer.
The "and ... and ... and" throughout the book generates the sense of a relaxed and informal description of the story, even as the word-choice and grammar indicate careful and mature writing.
I noticed the characteristic Francis descriptions of the hero's reactions to provocation: "flatly", "mildly", "calmly".
You construct a sentence with a colourful words, which tell the story, and essential filler words. The story is told by the adjectives, nouns, and verbs that leap out of the page at you: "soared ... bursting joie-de-vivre ... passing ... favourite ... bear hugs ... blue hair ... worried ... small-time trainer". The rest of it is there because it has to be formal English, to fully specify meaning, to permit variations in sentence structure and length. But the story is brought to life by the selection of those colour words.
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Philip Nore is struggling to decide what he is going to do as his career as a jockey winds down. His other passion is photography. He doesn’t realize what a great photographer he is until the death of George Millace a racing photographer.
Philip finds that George has apparently been blackmailing people with photos. However, to uncover the secrets Philip must determine the secrets and puzzles in development of the photos. There is a lot of technical detail on how he does this. He also falls in love and has a sweet romance. He of course solves the puzzles and then confronts the victims all bad in giving them a choice.
The plot follows how he is also asked by his cantankerous dying Grandmother to find the sister he never knew he had. He must also decide on whether to continue to throw races, retire, let people get clise to him emotionally and save the Jockey Club from an unscrupulous bad guy. As always in all Francis novels he is beaten severely without miraculously any severe injuries.
I liked the story and as always Francis captures the hidden world of racing behind the scenes. -
Loved it. The technical photography info was fascinating. For the times, Francis's writing on homosexuality was humane and civilized. The treatment of a muted emotional life as a result of childhood damage was beautifully done. Overall, one gets an impression of Francis as an enormously warm, thoughtful, compassionate human being. (No, I don't think the wife wrote the books. I do think she wrote the really awful posthumous short stories, though. Timeline, peoples! Logic!)
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I always enjoy reading a good Dick Francis novel. Phillip Nore in this one is a really good character. They are pretty clean, the language isn't too bad, and not a lot of sex.... Sometimes I even reread the books, because it's like being with a friend you haven't seen in several years. I really enjoy the characters he uses, and also enjoy the series he writes about too. I'm not a gambler, but I really enjoy watching them live, as well as on screen. There is a certain excitement that I don't find in many other places.
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What I like best about Francis' early work is that quite aside from the mystery angle, they are stories. Good stories, well told, well plotted, with decent use of the language. They don't depend too heavily on someone explaining the whole deal; while we follow the main character's thought processes, we also follow him as he goes through the labyrinth that reveals the plot. We are shown, not told. Hallelujah. Also, the characters both good and bad are people--with foibles, weaknesses and strong points. Even some of the killers aren't "bad to the bone", though on Planet Francis (at least so far in my rereading) they must of course be mentally deranged to even consider killing. Quite a lot of the MC's elucubrations are on the nature of true justice, and if it is actually served by destroying the lives of innocent bystanders in an attempt to reveal the facts.
Phillip Nore is naturally a jump jockey, and we are treated to a visit to the world of racing, which is the reason a large chunk of his fanbase bought and devoured his books from the very beginning. The best people in the right clothes doing the right thing--mostly. (Oh those green socks the arriviste wears! He can't help getting it ever-so-slightly wrong, because it's not in his breeding. Blood will out.) The too-large jockey who starves himself on cheese and tomatoes and black tea, which must be to save calories so he can drink Coke and champagne (not together, I might add) with his trainer or his friends. Nore is also an amateur photographer (as was Mrs Francis) whose hobby leads to some very unexpected developments. I have to say I spotted the killer about time said person made an appearance, and was furlongs ahead of the jockey throughout, but it's to the author's credit that the fact took nothing away from the reading experience. I realised halfway through that I had read this book sometime in the 1980s, but remembered nothing about it except the scene where Nore sits down in a basket chair and is recognised by an old acquaintance. He's also a commitment-phobic who sees himself as a drifter who just goes with the flow--but he can't resist a good puzzle, and he can't restrain himself from righting wrongs, even if it puts him on a par with the man he despises.
Reading with hindsight, I realised that the ten quid Nore offers for some information would be tantamount to 50 pounds in today's money--quite a lot for a ten-year-old child, and even for some of us adults. It was strange to read that he classes cocaine with marijuana in his own mind as "not deadly" compared to heroin. This was, of course, before we learned better, when cocaine was the party drug of choice among those who had too much money. I wondered also if I had been handed a US-release (or perhaps a re-release) copy, as at one point Philip mentions "fuck-ups" quite in passing. I doubt very much that either of the Francises would have considered using that word (no matter which of the couple you think actually wrote the mysteries) even in 1980. "Cock-ups" quite possibly, but the F-word would definitely have been infra dig.
All in all, still a cracking good read that stood the test of time. That England is gone, if it ever existed, but hey-that's why we read fiction. -
What is there to say about Dick Francis? As I think about all of his books (yes, this review covers all of his books, and yes I've read them all) I think about a moral ethical hero, steeped in intelligence and goodness embroiled in evil machinations within British horse racing society - either directly or indirectly. The heroes aren't always horse jockies, they can be film producers, or involve heroes engaged in peripheral professions that somehow always touch the horse racing world.
But more than that, Francis's heroes are rational human beings. The choices made are rational choices directed by a firm objective philosophy that belies all of Francis's novels. The dialogue is clear and touched with humor no matter the intensity of evil that the hero faces. The hero's thoughts reveal a vulnerability that is touching, while his actions are always based on doing the right thing to achieve justice.
Causing the reader to deeply care about the characters in a novel is a difficult thing to do. No such worries in a Francis novel. The point of view is first person, you are the main character as you read the story (usually the character of Mr. Douglas). The hero is personable, like able, non-violent but delivering swift justice with his mind rather than through physical means. This is not to say that violence is a stranger to our hero. Some of it staggering and often delivered by what we would think of normal persons living in British society.
You will come to love the world of Steeple Chase racing, you will grow a fondness for horses, stables, trainers and the people who live in that world. You will read the books, devouring one after the other and trust me Dick Francis has a lot of novels (over 40 by my last count).
There are several series woven into the fabric of Francis's work: notably the Sid Halley and Kit Fielding series.
Assessment: Dick Francis is one of my favorite writers. I read his books with a fierce hunger that remains insatiable and I mourn his death. -
One of my favorite Dick Francis stories.
There are two scenes that I particularly enjoyed: the first was when
Phillip Nore makes a gift of a candid photo of fellow amateur photographer George Millace to George's widow, and finds himself overwhelmed by her emotional reaction of joyful gratitude; the second is when he discovers the "Price" George had demanded from his blackmail victims.
Phillip then decides to demand the same price from George's killer. -
I've read all but one of Dick Francis books. Starting eons ago when I was but a mere kitten, and ending at some point in the 21st century after his wife's death when Francis son Felix started helping his papa write the books. At some point in time I became aware of Dick noting in some interview or another that his books had been co-written affairs - with his wife. And there is a definite difference between those books written prior to the wife's death, during Francis supposed solo writing career, then when Felix stepped in to help (I'm not actually sure if there actually was a middle part there, the solo part I mean). But all of that is beside the point - this is solidly within the time period when the book was a co-writing production utilizing both Dick and Dick's wife's, Mary, writing abilities ("I am Richard, Mary was Mary, and Dick Francis was the two of us together.")
Another little point to note before I move on to the book itself: At some point I noticed, after reading about 90% of the Francis work, that I'd rated all of the books a good solid 4.5 stars without any falling an inch below or above that line. Whereupon I realized I'd fallen into a trap that can open up - I expect a certain rating to appear on what I read, the book was solid enough, so I rated it that rating. After I realized that the ratings for the final 10% of the books rarely reached 4.5 star level. Which I mention because the first time I read this book I rated it 4.5 stars, but I've no clue if I really thought it deserved that rating.
Right, so.... Common theme here. Amateur detective type trying to live his life (here named Philip Nore), is uprooted from his comfortable enough rut to face several mysteries, and several beatings (both by horse and by thugs - Francis seemed to have loved to beat up his characters through both methods).
Here we find Philip Nore, at or slightly above the age of 30. Jockey, kinda of tall to be a jokey, but still, a jockey. He has drifted through life, letting whatever would happen - happen, without much fuss made by him. Driven into that type of personality because of his childhood - of which he had none (or at least not the norm - mother would drop him of with friends for 'a few days', that would last weeks, months, and sometimes years; and he didn't have much in the way of formal school training). He's had some wins on the horse, and some losses - some of these losses were 'forced' losses, but he doesn't really like doing that kind of thing (more bluntly: he's been forced, here or there, to throw races). That throwing races isn't really the main plotline here, though an important issue, just not the source of the mysteries.
Nore works lazily at unraveling two mysteries: 1) the grandmother he never met before wishes for him to hunt down the half-sister he never knew he had - he kind of boredly looks around but doesn't want to help the witch (the grandmother being the witch, not the half-sister); 2) a great, though not exactly much beloved, race photographer has died and left his 'reject' box behind to be inherited by Nore (Nore is/was friends with the man's son; while helping the son he came across said box and asked if he could take it with him - the box was filled with overexposed negatives, and the like - rejects). The second mystery involves examining these 'rejects' and 'fixing them'.
A third mystery develops relatively quickly. Nore likes solving puzzles, and doesn't really think the 'common mistakes' that are in the photographer's box of 'reminders' are anything special, certainly nothing a good photographer would keep as reminders. So he investigates the mistakes and finds that they are actually well concealed photographs and photographs of letters. Of a . . . dark nature. (ETA: Right, sorry, this above paragraph reads like it should be the second mystery, no? Second mystery involves figuring out how to 'fix' the 'ruined' negatives so that images/pictures/letters would appear. Third mystery involves . . . was George a blackmailer?)
Whereupon I note that the book description is rubbish. At least the one for this specific edition (if the others are different, I do not care enough to look). "Longtime jockey Philip Nore suspects that a racetrack photographer's fatal accident was really murder--". No he doesn't. Late in the book someone makes some comment about how George's (I think the photographer's name was George) accident might not have been an accident. Before that Nore suspected nothing about the accident being murder. Nothing. And after the comment he was more 'well . . . huh . . . possibly?' not 'OMG! YES MURDER!'.
Right, so. Nore wanders around riding horses. Takes photos; examines a different photographer's photos; falls into a romance by sheer accident; falls into a possible new career similarly by accident; solves a couple of mysteries.
Of note: Now that I've read the book for a second time I'll note a few things: Rereading this book reminds me that Francis main character in his books tended to be kind of rather depressing types; the 'Dick Francis' team did write some interesting books, but not at a high level like I'd recalled. Oh, and, I'm not sure I noticed the oddly rather okay view of homosexual relationships that is on display in this book (I mean by everyone but for the grandmother). Two of the people who raised Philip is remembered quite fondly by Philip - they were a gay couple; and another gay couple turns up - they seem okay-ish people. Which is interesting when I hadn't recalled Francis including such characters in book and this one is from 1980. (Don't, by the way, go into this book to read happy gay couples because of the words I use above; neither couple is exactly happy - one read like those relationships I read in lesbian pulp from the 1950s/1960s (though here, this book, involving men); while the other relationship was much more 'happy' - but neither relationship was examined in any depth and none of the gay characters have significant roles in the book).
I got side-tracked.
Good enough book. Nothing near what I probably originally rated the book, 4.5, but good enough book.
Rating: 3.5
July 1 2019 -
When I was in elementary and middle school, my mother volunteered reviewing audiobooks for an audiobook magazine so she was always listening to books on tape in the car. My favorites were the Dick Francis books. I loved horses, and I loved mysteries.
Still do. It’s good to see I still consider Francis a solid mystery writer. The protagonist, Phillip, is very likable, and Francis writes in a manner that is straightforward without being dry. -
Dick Francis was a… Hell, does anyone not know Dick Francis at this point? Anyway, he was a former jockey who went on to write an endless tyrade of mystery novels set in the world of horseracing. I think there’s something endearing about that.
My grandmother swore by his books and passed her addiction down to my mother, who this year finally jostled me into reading him too. And I get the hype. This was a lot of fun.It’s a nice, cosy mystery novel with several interweaving plotlines that has you turning pages so quickly you’d think you’d lost a banknote in the book.
This one in particular is about a jockey cum photography aficionado untangling a web of corruption in the racing world thanks to a secret stash of photos left behind by a recently deceased sports photographer.
For those of you who like dipping into a variety of genres, it’s well worth giving these books a try. And if you like mystery novels, what’s wrong with you, why haven’t you read them already? -
"Reflex" by Dick Francis is a camera lens term, so add that to the standard jockey hero, whose natural passivity is activated by honest integrity, and asserts justice without officialdom. Narrator Philip Nore 30, was abandoned "just till Saturday" by his mother Caroline, dead from heroin addiction, to be raised by a series of friends. Samantha he tracks down. Charlie taught him photography and willed his equipment.
Helping injured rider Steve Millace with his crashed dead dad George's negatives leads to exposure and developing puzzles, blackmail, beatings on top of corruptly instigated horse falls. Earnest solicitor Jeremy Folk 25, more intelligent than his fumbling manner lets on, "with office-coloured skin" p6 forwards dying estranged grandmother's request to find hitherto unknown half-sister Amanda, and suffers assassination attempt targeted on Nore. Break-ins, burglary, arson, blackmail. Total surprise (only after do I remember I read this before) are the "alternate suggestions", hidden for hundreds of pages (p350). Bruises, blood, danger and suspense.
Nore finds kind welcoming Samantha and her lovely lively daughter Clare. "It began in friendship and progressed to passion. Ended in bretathlessness and laughter, sank to murmurs and sleep. The best it had ever been for me." p431 Second run "A tingling, fierce, gentle, intense, turbulent time." p433. Overall, from feelings of familiar comfort to coming home. Adult content does not have to be explicit or crude (my x-rated).
Francis has a knack for conveying sophisticated technical information easily, unique turn of phrase description, dropping hints, stringing along. A man's photograph is identified, but 17 pages till we learn the villain p452. The author is an expert director of character and action. We cheer for growing demonstrations of Nore's heroism.
"One thing my haphazard upbringing had given me was an almost limitless capacity for waiting. Waiting for people to come, who didn't; and for promises to be fulfilled, that weren't." p13
"Survival for so many years had been a matter of accepting what I was given ... I had taught myself for so long not to want things that weren't offered to me that I now found very little to want."p58
"Doing nothing was weak and wrong. If I learned all George's secrets I would have to accept the moral burden of deciding what to do about them ... and doing it." p288
Typo:
p396 "He won't did." for die -
I’m nearing half way in reading Dick Francis’ mysteries. He has a formula that he tends to follow, and this one fits to his formula well. Here a steeplechase jockey solves a mystery involving strange happenings around racing, including a mysterious death. As in most of the Francis books I’ve read, the protagonist gets beat up multiple times. Francis writes fluently of pain and recovery, and I always find myself wincing as I read these sections. And as in all other Francis books I’ve read, he brings in another topic or two to weave into the story. In this one, a minor topic is publishing, and we learn a little about that world. But by far the main topic beyond jockeying is photography. The hero is a photographer as well as a jockey, and the first victim is a photographer. We dive into darkrooms, filters, and Nikons. In my mind, though, this book “jumped the shark”. Francis went beyond adding a photography storyline and threw in some gimmicks based on photography. Overall, a typical Francis story but one where the plot was hampered by a nonsensical timing issue.
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It's been some years since I read this, so while I remembered the general plot, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the re-read. I didn't remember the strong female roles in this, given the 1980 publication date. As with most of Dick Francis' mysteries, there's a lot of information about a particular subject besides horse-racing; in this case, photography.
Enjoy! -
If "Whip Hand" is Dick Francis best novel, "Reflex" in my opinion is his next best novel.
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Tight writing and a not too predictable plot make this a hugely enjoyable read.
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Simon Prebble is the narrator for the audiobook version of this novel.
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Philip Nore, who earns his living as a jockey, but incidentally with his camera many photos of racing places in places where the normal public has no access fights on different fronts. On the one hand he is harassed by a lawyer, that he should visit his dying grandmother and should fulfill her last wish. He gets to know his past, which was not always pleasant to him. On the other hand, he receives from a jockey colleague a box that his dead father has filled with various photo puzzles. Thanks to his experience as a photographer, he gets to the bottom of the various mysteries. Not only he, but also important persons are in danger.
In addition to all this, he is being pressured by a horse owner to manipulate races.
It was a very exciting read and kept me guessing until the end.
(4½) -
This one struck a chord with me. One of the main character's name is Clare, spelled the correct way! Tough childhood and chosen family found along the way.
One of my favorites so far in the HAWGYK (Horsin' Around Will Get You Killed: The Dick Francis Challenge. -
Loved it. I really like the effort he puts into his research and sharing it within the story. Fast paced and entertaining.
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Rip roaring thriller set in the shady world of horse racing. I've read a lot of Dick Francis books over the years and they rarely disappoint. I love the action packed plots and the several different story threads that keep you guessing till the end. It's been a long time since i last read one so this was a nostalgic trip back in time for me and I really enjoyed it.
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Life has changed for me enough lately that I can now participate in the book discussion groups at my public library. The book for October is Reflex by Dick Francis and I'm thrilled that it spurred me to a reread of this great mystery.
When I began reading mysteries (about 5th grade) I was fortunate that the first three authors I read were Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Dick Francis. These remain the standards by which all other mysteries I read are judged. Tough acts to follow!
In Reflex, as with all Dick Francis novels, we are plunged into the world of British horse racing. Our hero is Phillip Norse, a 2nd tier jockey who had a very unconventional childhood because his mother constantly left him with other people to raise. He has no idea who his father was and his maternal grandmother has always refused to acknowledge his existence. He learned his two passions in life, photography and horse racing, from two of the couples that his mother left his with.
Our story begins with two events. His grandmother decides she wants to see him and one of the most prominent racing photographers is killed in a car accident.
These two events change Phillip's life. Phillip learns from his grandmother that he has a sister and if he can find her, the grandmother will leave all her money to this unknown sister. He gets involved in the death of the photographer because of his friendship with the photographer's son. It becomes clear that the photographer did not always make people happy with his pictures.
Phillip has a number of ingenious mysteries and puzzles to solve. They are really very clever and entertaining to read about. Through them all he has to come to grips with his own code of ethics. How far is he willing to go for justice and for the good of the racing world? He also has to come to grips with his own need to keep people at bay. Can he open up and let people into his life? There is great character development as he explores these questions. Every solution to every mystery is satisfying. I find this book to be a superb mystery from an author who would have been a master of any genre he had decided to write. -
I thin that this book is a really good book because it is really detail on every single things that happened but the bad thing about this book is that its climax is really delayed. This book is about a photographer who's name is called "William" that took a photo which got him dead. Before he was assassinated, he handed those photos to a friend of him who is a jockey named "Philip" because he knew that he is in danger. I like this part because it is the rising action of the book which is at the really front! Then he found the photo graphs full of mysteries and started to find clues. Next he noticed that he is in danger too. He was getting assassinated by many peoples many times, he was also really badly hurt many times. The Guy that wants to murder him because of the photos even hurt Philip's mother. Then clue by clue, finally he found out that those photos were printed on a kind of paper called "diazo" which the words, drawings and photos will only come out when its, heated with sunlight with cold ammonia on it but it might damage the original thing on the diazo paper. The other way is to heat the ammonia in a pan and when the gas come out just put the diazo above the pan and the printing on the diazo paper will come out. I also really like this part because it let me learn a new thing that is really cool because this is like a secret agent stuff. Finally from the letter, photo, and drawing in the diazo paper, Philip know who wanted to kill him, why and who killed William. So he worked it all out and finally got the person then ended the story. The fun thing about this story is that it will always make you feel fooled because the thing that happened is not what you though will happen so I think it is a nice book that is worth to read.
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Dick Francis is always a good read. The mystery is good and I always feel I learn a little more about what it is like to be a jockey. This book had an interesting twist in that photography was a main theme throughout the mystery. I followed the mystery, discovering the evidence as the hero did. This was a thoroughly satisfying mystery.
Who would enjoy it? People who like racing or horses and mysteries. People who like photography and mysteries. If you like all three as I do, then you should love it.
