Like Father, Like Scion

Back in 1999, a controversy erupted over whether famous English jockey-turned-author Dick Francis was actually penning the novels on which his moniker appeared. Unauthorized biographer Graham Lord suggested in Dick Francis: A Racing Life that Francis’ wife, Mary, “wrote most of the former jockey’s novels but shunned the limelight in favour of the pulling power of her husband’s name.” That rumor seemed to be legitimized by the fact that, after Mary Francis’ death in 2000, her husband produced no new horse-racing mysteries for half a dozen years, until the publication of Under Orders in 2006--arguably, a mystery novel as good as many that appeared before it under Dick Francis’ name.

Now there’s a new Family Francis flap, this time concerning the authorship of Dead Heat, the brand-new novel credited on its cover to “Dick Francis with Felix Francis.” As Crime Always Pays blogger Declan Burke notes, Felix is the younger of his father’s two sons and has been Dick Francis’ manager. A press release accompanying advance reading copies of Dead Heat explains that he’s now become much more than that:

With forty novels under his belt, Dick feels that the time has come to begin handing over the family business. Felix ... has long been involved with managing Dick’s many publishing commitments and has helped with the research for several previous novels, not least with Twice Shy [1981] which drew on Felix’s experiences both as a physics teacher and as a marksman. Felix, in Dead Heat, has for the first time taken a central role in the writing of the book.

Burke raises the obvious question about whether novel-writing can justly be regarded as a “family business.” But this new dual byline makes one reconsider, as well, Lord’s assertion that Mary Francis did the heavy lifting on her spouse’s fiction for so many years. If the famous Mr. Francis and his publisher are willing to let Felix share writing credit now, would they really have bothered lying in 1999 about Mary’s essential contributions to earlier books? Sounds like a mystery worthy of Sid Halley’s attention.

READ MORE: “Dick Francis,” by Ed Gorman (Ed Gorman’s Blog).