It was disastrously easy to make bad horseracing pictures and only possible to do it at bankable level, in my view, if racing became the framing background to human drama.

Although the sentiments above, expressed by Tom Lyon, narrator of Wild Horses, refer to the movie business, they clearly express author Dick Francis’ own approach to writing mysteries. Racing is always the background, but the heart of the story is… well, the human heart.

Thomas Lyon, film director, is a native of Newmarket, Suffolk, England, and he has chosen to come home from California to do his latest film, based on a successful novel inspired by an actual murder that occurred during Tom’s childhood. A horse trainer’s wife was found hanged in a stable, and whether it was homicide or suicide remains a mystery.

The story starts with Tom at the death bed of an old friend, a farrier, who is dying of bone cancer. His friend’s mind is confused, and he makes a confused confession to Tom, thinking him a priest. Throughout the story that follows, Tom feels a strange kind of obligation, as if he were in fact a priest with a duty to God.

Although it’s been decades since the murder the movie is based on happened, it turns out that someone doesn’t want old stones overturned. Tom receives death threats, the film’s star is attacked with a knife, an old lady is wounded, and then there is a murder. And step by step Tom comes to the realization that his friend’s dying confession has a direct bearing on the mystery.

This is Dick Francis at his best. Tom Lyon is a very satisfying hero, ethical, brave, and not overconfident. A particular pleasure of the story is the joke Francis tells on himself (since he’d seen several of his own stories adapted, at least for TV), in making the script writer, also the author of the novel it’s based on, an arrogant, inflexible prima donna who is not as smart as he thinks he is and does nothing but make difficulties.

Only mild cautions for language and subject matter. Highly recommended. Good holiday reading, for instance.

Any author who offers a fresh take on an old genre and carries it off successfully, deserves praise. So all in all I praise Jim Cliff for The Shoulders of Giants, the first volume in a projected new private eye series.

Cliff’s hero and narrator is Jake Abraham, a young private eye just starting out in his own office in Chicago. He says he grew up on Jim Rockford and Spenser, and he’s a little starry-eyed – and aware of it. The novelty of his character is that instead of the expected cynical, hard-boiled sleuth we’ve seen so often, Jake is young and optimistic and not entirely sure of himself – but nevertheless good at his job.

In this story he’s hired by a disgraced former police captain to find his daughter, who has disappeared. Before long her murdered body is found, and then there are more bodies, and soon the police are looking for a serial killer. Because one of the detectives is a friend of his, Jake is allowed to hang around, and even to help (he’s unique among fictional private detectives in actually standing aside and shutting up when the police tell him to), and his inquiries lead him at last into a deadly showdown with a murderer.

Jake is a likeable character, and I generally enjoyed the story. I do have quibbles. Author Cliff seems to have done a fair amount of research on guns, but he doesn’t seem to have much hands on experience – he thinks you’re supposed to shut one eye when aiming, which most instructors will tell you not to do, and he has Jake, in a gunfight in a dark room, waiting for his opponent to talk in order to aim at the voice, when he would have been able to aim at the muzzle flashes. And there are a couple language problems. He doesn’t know what “enormity” means, and he confuses the word “illicit” with “elicit.” He also suggests a murder method to the forensic scientists which I’m pretty sure they would have been familiar with.

Still and all, a good start generally. I like Jake Abraham, and am positively inclined toward the next book. Cautions for the usual language, sex (including a gay bar), and mature themes.