Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

DICK FRANCIS:DICK FRANCIS, who has died aged 89, was a unique figure – a champion steeplechase jockey who, without any previous apparent literary bent, became an international best-selling writer, the author of 42 crime novels, selling more than 60 million copies in 35 languages.

Right from the start, with Dead Certin 1962, the Dick Francis thriller showed a mastery of lean, witty genre prose reminiscent – sometimes to the point of parody – of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. It was an American style that many clever people in England had attempted to reproduce without much success, and it was a wonder how a barely educated jockey was able to do the trick with such effortless ease. People said his highly educated wife wrote the books for him. It was a mystery that was never satisfactorily solved.