Thursday, July 15, 2021

Keep going

Dick Francis is one of my favorite crime novelists. In an interesting essay at CrimeReads the author explains how "Rediscovering the Novels of Dick Francis Was the Answer to a Personal Crisis and a Mysterious Illness."
.... But now that the dust is settling and my life is resuming, it’s easy to connect a few dots. Why did I keep reading Francis’ novels? It’s simple. They were never about inventing fictional explanations for Devon Loch’s mysterious collapse. They’re about solving the harder problem: how does a person keep going after everything falls apart? In Proof, our protagonist Tony Beach begins the novel almost paralyzed with grief by the death of his young wife. Sid Halley, hero of Odds Against, Whip Hand, Come to Grief and Under Orders, still dreams of the races he used to win before a horse’s hoof destroyed his left hand. In Straight, Derek doubts he’ll ever have half of his bother’s decency and intelligence.

But in every novel, these men find the courage to keep going. They do the right thing. They survive. ....
John Fram, "Rediscovering the Novels of Dick Francis Was the Answer to a Personal Crisis and a Mysterious Illness"

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