Decider by Dick Francis

Decider by Dick Francis

One of these days I’m going to list out my favorite Dick Francis stories and I think that Decider will rank number three. It’s a wonderful mystery and an even more wonderful story of a father and his young sons. Through a complicated series of events, Lee Morris has come to own an eight percent share of a racecourse and that share drags him into the highly complicated politics of the uber rich Stratton family. The Stratton’s are a highly dysfunctional family with dozens of secrets some of which are worth killing over.

 

But in addition to the classic mystery, you get the story of Lee and his sons and it is both heartwarming and critical to the development of the plot. Add in that Lee is a builder—a restorer of wrecked homes—and you get two score interesting pieces of trivia about the building trade and what it takes to run a successful business like a pub. And of course, there is racetrack lore aplenty as you will always find in a Francis book.

 

The only thing wrong with this novel is that the mystery gets solved and the book comes to an end.