I always enjoy Dick Francis novels. They are well written, nicely plotted, and have a very strong narrative arc. In this one Philip Nore, a steeplechase jockey in his mid 30s is dealing with the usual aspects of being a jockey—not enough rides, suggestions for him to throw a race, and little personal life. His life changes as a lawyer finds him and tells him that his long-estranged grandmother wants him to find a sister that he never knew he had. His grandmother is dying and angry about his mother, who ran off as a teenager and got addicted to drugs. Philip learns some about his past, discovers that his talent for photography may lead to a life past racing, and develops a relationship with a young, bright woman who is connected to his past and wants to encourage his photographic career. During all this Philip also discovers the truth behind a talented but nasty photographer who dies in car accident and the sort of unusual blackmail that he carried. Great read—and very precise about how photography works.

I was wavering between 3 and 4 stars until I hit Chapter 16. The story fell apart with Philip's actions or lack of actions. He has a nosy neighbor who can hear his phone ring, but he won't call out for help? And when people do find him, he doesn't want them to call a doctor or the police? Then when he thinks he could be bleeding internally, he wants champagne not Tylenol or some type of pain medication? I mean I love champagne but that makes no sense. Then Donna shows up and their conversation is weird. From Chapter 16 onward, the whole story falls apart. It had potential but the climax was flat and the story failed in logic throughout.

This was the first Francis novel I ever read--30 years ago. It's been fun to read because it's like visiting an old friend. I remember the story well enough to recognize elements as they unfold, but not enough to spoil the story. Back then I liked it enough to read another. Now I recognize it as typical Francis. It stands up well, and remains one of my favorites.

By the early 1980s, Dick Francis was really in excellent form. Twice Shy, Trial Run, Break In, and Reflex hit a very satisfying stride. What's the difference? The underlying puzzles, the intellectual content, are more interesting. In Twice Shy, we have a father and son duo who are working with primitive computers to foil an extremely violent villain. The heroes are horse people, but the problems with which they are dealing are more universal than the world of horse racing.

In Break In, we were introduced to Kit Fielding. The story was permeated with racing scenes, but the real subject was one man's limitless desire for power, and others' determination to frustrate him.

Philip Nore, the hero of Reflex, is much like Kit Fielding. They even live in the same town, Lambourn, and they are both jockeys with interests beyond racing. Philip is an accomplished photographer, and his familiarity with both the racing world and photographic technique leads him into a tangled story of blackmail and murder.

Briefly, when George Millace, racecourse photographer, dies in an auto accident, Philip, through his acquaintance with George's son, inherits an odd collection of apparently blank or unreadable materials. Some negative with nothing on them but blobs of orange. A couple of blank sheets of paper. A piece of plastic. When Philip figures out how to reveal the secrets in this unlikely collection of trash, he opens up an exciting, and dangerous, world of intrigue.

Dick Francis novels are reliably entertaining, plus you always learn something, since Francis constructs his protagonists so that they either possesses or develop special skills and knowledge as they move through the action to solve the mystery's problem. In REFLEX, we get not only a refresher course in steeplechase riding, but a lesson in photography and the processing of films. In REFLEX, Phillip Nore is both jockey and an amateur photographer on the road to becoming a professional.

Nore's interest in picture-taking at horse races prompted him to focus in on George Millace, who had become a fixture at the tracks, and who, in the opening of the novel, we learn has died as a result of hitting his car into a tree late one night. Millace's son Steve, also a jockey, turns to Phillip during this stressful time, and before long Phillip is drawn into the mystery of why someone is attacking the widow, ransacking then burning down her house. As things unfold, Phillip finds blackmail, extortion and various other criminal pursuits.

As in the case of Francis's novels, REFLEX is an engaging story with plenty of action and a solid resolution where justice is dispensed. Francis always gets high marks from me!

It was ten years since I last read this book, and it was like meeting a loved friend after a long time. I felt completely comfortable and safe. It's great to read a suspense novel which has nothing gory or disturbing in it.

this is my very first book from the author, and I love it!

This time I learned about photography. :-)

Dick Francis explores the world of film photography, something that will be totally foreign to today's digital photography generation. As with most Dick Francis novels, the hero is a plucky jockey who can, and does, take a beating and survives to get the upper hand against the villains. The interesting twist is the photographic puzzles he must solve in order to catch the murderer.

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.

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 :
-tthere is actual steeplechase racing in the book, as Philip Nore, the protagonist, is still active on the racetrack as an amateur jockey
-tby 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.
-tthe plot is less linear and predictable than usual, as there are multiple avenues of investigation and more than one adversary / puzzle to be solved
-tthere 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.

As always, an incredible mystery from start to finish. A little slow at the start from his other works but quickly becomes a captivating puzzle to solve.