Good read!

The best early Francis I’ve read

A good mystery with great characters. The added details about painting and Australia are really interesting. I know a book is good when I finish and think “wow.” That’s what happened with the final page of “In the Frame.”

I stood on the outside of disaster, looking in.

Sometimes you know right from the opening phrase that you're in for a treat and that you will probably abandon all other pursuits around the house until you turn the last page of the latest Dick Francis thriller. As I've already read about two dozen of his books, this isn't really a surprise, and what others may call predictable and repetitive in his characterization and plotting I call reliable, dependable and comfortably familiar.

But Francis does like to use again and again certain techniques and certain types of heroes and villains, so the best way to differentiate between his stories is by the profession of the main character and by the sometimes touristical trivia of his chosen location, when the action moves overseas. By this metric, In the Frame is about painting, and of course the main area of interest for Charles Todd is the painting of horses.



With his usual thorough research, Francis offers interesting bits about pigments, brush techniques, famous exponents of the art - Stubbs, Munnings. As for the travel trivia, Todd starts on his quest in England, but has to follow leads to Australia and New Zealand, where you can almost see the author taking down notes on the Ayers Rock, men only bars, Maori or volcanic terrains.

With the connection betwen painting and racing established, the book includes some very good scenes around the racing track, from the small venues in the Home Counties to the extraordinary popularity of the sport at the Antipodes:

Jump racing at Plumpton, and the familiar swelling of excitement at the liquid movement of racehorses. Paintings could never do justice for them: never. The moment caught on canvas was always second best.

The story itself is a murder investigation, with Mr. Todd thrown into an unfamiliar role as private investigator in trying to help his cousin Donald who loses his wife in a brutal burglary in the opening sequence. Despite an improbable coincidence early on  Todd immediately stumbles upon a second burglary in an unrelated incident  and some really stupid moves on the part of his adversaries, the action moves at a lively pace and the pages turn almost by themselves. While Todd is the usual competent professional with a quiet presence hiding a quick mind and unrelenting drive, obstinacy and physical endurance, I found the presence of his Australian friend provides a welcome balance. Jik is another painter, as loud and outgoing as Todd is introverted and self reliant. In the absence of a romantic interest for the main character, the story makes do with two tangential ones, subtly understated but just as powerful and authentic as I have come to expect from mr. Francis.

In conclusion, as good a point as any other for readers unfamiliar with the author, and a decent addition to the collection of the fans.

I listened to the audiobook from the library. This murder mystery novel has art, murder, theft, and travel. Charles Todd is an artist of horses, but he travels the world to prove his cousin innocent of murder. Recommended.

3.5 stars, rounding down. I liked this, this was a reasonably entertaining although slightly dated 1970s style mystery that you can read comfortably over the course of a quiet weekend. I had never read Dick Francis before, so figured I'd start with what most consider one of this better efforts. It probably was a bit of a barn-burner back in the 1970s when this came out, but I've read enough more recent and very compelling mystery/suspense thrillers that this one was merely "pretty good" by today's standards.

It's funny that I just recently watched the movie "Knives Out" which is as send-up of overly elaborate plots of mystery books from the 70s and 80s. The central crime in this book was a bit elaborate and unrealistic, so I couldn't help but think of Knives Out when reading this. Still, this overall was descent. I liked the lengthy stretch down in Australia, a semi-travelogue of the way things were there in the mid-70s - a country I have a fondness, having spent the better part of a year down there from 1996 to '97. Fun stuff, it almost makes me want to bump this up to 4 stars.

Any Dick Francis book gets five stars from me.

Ahh, Dick Francis, my secret indulgence. I like his books, the characters and the locations are always well drawn and the books come to a satisfying conclusion. This one was no different, except I've been to many of the places in the novel, Melbourne, Sydney, Wellington and Auckland, so that was a nice change.

I enjoyed this one. Our hero was impossible to stop, once he was on the scent. It had a lot of travel, wine, art, painting info, and of course racing :-).

One of Francis's best novels. The story is, as usual with him, well-written. The plot is tight and without holes. The twist at the end is surprising and satisfying.
The characters pull you into the story and the mystery captures your imagination. The thrills keep you on the edge of your seat. Very difficult to put down.
Francis naturally weaves horses and horse racing into the plot without disrupting the flow of the story.
Highly recommend!

I'm a huge Francis fan, and this book was interestingly different from his usual. In this case the main character is an artist who paints horses, but his involvement in a mystery happens when his cousin's wife comes home early to discover a robbery and is murdered. To try to save his cousin's sanity, Charles Todd starts to put things together in his head, deciding to investigate further to break apart a complicated art theft ring. He enlists the help of his reckless old friend Jik, who happens to have gotten married recently, so his wife Sarah unwillingly joins them. They travel from England to Australia to New Zealand in search of clues, and there are many narrow escapes. What I love about these heroes is their low-key, no nonsense approach. They have hidden strengths that they usually don't show, and they are always persistent. Their intelligence solves the crimes in their heads, but then they do take crazy and very dangerous risks to prove them. Interesting, fast-moving, and totally enjoyable.

A Dick Francis novel is always a treat. Probably my favorite series of all time (although nearly every one has a different hero so they are not connected aside from being set in the British horse racing world). This one involves an artist of racehorses who gets caught up in a theft ring when his cousin's house is burgled and his young wife murdered. Always elegantly executed, with a deft touch for just enough detail and satisfying mental detective work. Good stuff!

Published in 1977, this is Dick Francis’s fourteenth novel and the admirable work of a true professional. The hero-narrator is an artist who specializes in paintings of horses, but the real lure of the novel is its thoroughness. It may be a thriller meant for popular consumption, but no corner seems to have been cut. Every sentence is trim and taut with a style as carefully edited and worked out as the plot. The main character and his artist friend talk and even seem to think believably like artists. You learn about how an artist sees the world. An array of settings appears, all fully realized. In short, great care has been taken with all aspects of the book no matter how small. The characters come off as real people to care about, and the danger seems all too real as well. I don’t know that I would rank this as his topmost book, but close to his best I should think, and certainly the work of a complete professional. Many writers would love to write one book as fully realized as this one, and Dick Francis reached this level of achievement again and again.