Knockdown – Dick Francis, 1974 ★★

Putting the Blood in Bloodstock

Dick Francis wrote very well. I feel confident in stating this, in part because I have read some fine Dick Francis novels and in part because he kept me reading this, a novel by no means fine. It is the mark of a superlative novelist to hold a reader’s attention even when firing blanks.

Knockdown begins with exactly that, a knockdown attack on our protagonist while he arranges a horse sale. As this is the livelihood of Jonah Dereham, he is both concerned and confused.

Why would a pair of thugs beat him up over the title to a non-sensational horse? And why would they attack him again when he acquires its replacement? Is it business? Is it personal? In time, Dereham discovers it is a bit of both.

Francis knew how to deliver a gripping start. He keeps it going for a while here, especially a segment where we follow Jonah in pursuit of a runaway horse (not his, but an expensive thoroughbred he is looking after for a client). But Knockdown is hobbled by such matters as thin exposition, mono-dimensional villains, and a weak ending. Francis fans will enjoy his steady narrative voice, but Knockdown struggles with the business of delivering what Francis did best – a horse-racing mystery.

As a bloodstock agent – “bloodsucking agents, more like” in the words of one victim of an agent’s chicanery – Jonah has a privileged view into how racehorses are sold. For long stretches, it seems Knockdown, published in 1974 in the middle of Francis' second decade as a novelist, is meant as an quasi-fictional advisory about how easily bad business practices are disguised in the racehorse acquisition business.

“People who bought racehorses could be more easily conned than any old lady parting with her savings to a kind young man on a doorstep,” Francis has Jonah tell us in his first-person narration. “People who bought racehorses were buying dreams, and would follow anyone who said he knew the way to the end of the rainbow. A few had found the crock of gold there, and the rest had never given up looking.”

Jonah’s main problem, we come to learn, is that he chose a poor line of business for being honest. As a middleman in purchasing thoroughbred horses, he deals with shady people who want him to play by their rules or get out of the game. Even though he doesn’t inform on these colleagues, Jonah still becomes a prime target of their intimidation – and violence, too, as matters seem to pan out – all for his refusal to employ the same tricks others use so profitably.

“You’re going to do what we tell you, whether you like it or not,” Jonah is told. “If we get rough, you’ve asked for it.”

This idea has some promise, but as the story develops, the cheating angle becomes a bog. In short, to make Francis’s point, the bad agents operate too obviously and clumsily to be believed, more like a herd of elephants than a clique of confidence men, as the above dialogue suggests. Jonah is no threat to their livelihood, as he explains himself, he only disapproves of their activities silently while trying to make his own honest way without trouble. The reason he’s singled out for their abuse never makes sense, not even in the final scene when the identity of the ringleader is finally revealed to the reader in rather ponderous fashion.

The rage with which his enemies operate is not only out of whack with the sort of cool calculation one might expect from men of their craft – one even attacks him in a public stable with a pitchfork – but proves their undoing more than once as Jonah gets them to blow up and blurt out valuable information when they make another of their many threats.

The novel’s subplots also creak of contrivance. While in pursuit of his runaway horse, Jonah meets an attractive woman who crashed her car while avoiding the animal. Soon they are trying out a romance, tentatively, both being loners by experience and inclination. This aspect gets a lot of oxygen-sucking attention. I kept wondering what Sophie Randolph was up to, why she was slowing down the story with her mordant asides and sidelong looks. I was still wondering by the novel’s end.

To add to the overall contrivance around the character, Sophie has an aunt who has had bad dealings with bloodstock agents, in particular a fellow named Vic Vincent who by this point in the story has already singled out Jonah for his unfriendly attentions. Vincent is the main hardcase in the novel, who we are told is great at disguising his true nature behind a mask of gentility. But as we frequently see him frothing in rage to get his way, it’s hard to imagine Vic as much of a foil.

An alcoholic brother is a better device: Here you get a taste of Francis’s trademark wit and tough-nosed empathy, enough to keep you reading. Unemployed and living with his supportive brother, Crispin Dereham is a binger who goes weeks between drinks, then gets quite ugly when he wants his fix. When Jonah sees the drinking lamp on in his brother’s eyes, he gives his perpetually skint sibling a few quid, “to save him stealing it,” he tells Sophie, and lets Crispin visit a neighboring pub.

“When the craving’s on him, he’ll do literally anything to get alcohol,” Jonah explains to Sophie later. “It’s kinder to let him have it with some shred of dignity.”

Dick Francis and friend. Before turning to mystery novels, Francis was a successful steeplechase jockey. Image from Wikipedia.

Dick Francis mysteries typically have something to do with horses, it was the author’s calling card and a very successful one, sustaining a 40-plus-year career which is now being carried on by his son. The idea could seem a mere gimmick, but Francis was a solid, imaginative writer who knew how to make his gimmick work, by taking on different aspects of the racehorse business in different novels, and seldom reusing a story idea or protagonist.

The last Francis novel I read, Proof, kept horse-racing very much in the background; the protagonist there was a caterer and the horse-racing set formed part of his roster of clients, not figuring much in the final story.

Here, horses are more front and center. This may be the most horse action I’ve experienced in a Francis novel, and it was fairly well-done.

I liked a tender moment between Jonah and an old steeplechase horse he uses for a hack, after Jonah rides him to find that missing horse: “I patted him and told him he was a great fellow. Fetched him a couple of apples from the tack room and led him back to his paddock. He hadn’t galloped so fast or felt such excitement since the day they cheered him home up the hill at Cheltenham. He snorted with what was easy to read as pride when I released him and trotted away on springy ankles like a yearling.”

Watching Jonah looking over equine prospects for signs of future success is good fun as Francis has him explaining what’s what, even if it does seem like Jonah too often is the only person at the paddock with a working brain.

Francis drew me in and kept me reading a while before I figured out this wasn't going to be one of his better entries; still, it had enough energy and cleverness to leave me interested in reading more of his vast and well-regarded output.