Francis, Go Home

By Martha Duffy

Smokescreen

by DICK FRANCIS

215 pages. Harper & Row. $6.95.

Dick Francis, the British ex-jockey, is by now one of the exclusive circle of thriller writers whose annual novels make review columns and bestseller lists.

A Francis book is a reliable product, full of suspense, with racing backgrounds as sound as Buckpasser's bloodlines. His style has one peculiarity a wide streak of rather naive masochism. The likes of Spillane use sadomasochism calculatedly and in trite conjunction with sex. Francis' men (he would never harm a woman) customarily suffer alone, in traps set by a villain far offstage. In addition, permanent personal affliction usually lurks somewhere. The hero of For Kicks has a crippled hand. Forfeit--one of Francis' stronger plots--is marred by a wife in an iron lung whose patience rivals Penelope's. In the new book, the hero has a damaged child--big brother dropped her on her head, poor little nipper--but fortunately she is a continent away from most of the action.

Despite the foregoing familiar elements, Smokescreen marks a change for Francis. Though he has written about successful riders before, this is the first time he has identified with a man who has it made. Indeed we are treated to the problems of celebrity. The hero, Edward Lincoln, is a famous movie sex symbol. The ruthless studio connives to exploit him; craven flacks bedevil him. Lincoln, who grew up in a racing stable, promises a dying friend that he will check up on why her expensive South African stable has not had a winner in months. The reason turns out to be pretty obvious, and Francis goes on to other things. Alas for faithful readers, the book offers a big scene in the bowels of a gold mine, dull exposition on how gold is obtained from rock, and some chatter about the racial question that makes one hope that wanderlust never leads Francis to a Navajo reservation.

It is natural that mystery freaks--addicts by definition--should demand more of the same from their suppliers, who may naturally want to diversify But the rites of the changing room, the backstretch betrayals, the chill of winter steeplechase meets gave Francis' books their singular texture, and he rang very inventive changes on his basic material. He is downgrading himself when he starts globetrotting like Victoria Holt or Helen Maclnnes. Dick Francis, won't you please go home?

Martha Duffy

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