High Stakes – Dick Francis, 1975 ★★½

Hard-Charging Mystery Hangs on at the Turn

If you know Dick Francis already and want more of his mystery fiction, here’s another gripping if formulaic excursion into the underside of life, connected in this case rather firmly to Francis’s home turf, the world of horse-racing.

If you are a Francis novice, High Stakes isn’t exactly the type to make you a fan.

A feeling of being run through the motions hangs over this crime novel, not unlike finding yourself inside one of the wheel-driven devices with which, we come to discover, the main character has made himself a mint.

“I tend to think in circles,” is how he explains himself.

Steven Scott’s ingenious and lucrative toy inventions have put him in a position to buy quality race horses at a relatively young age, despite an overwhelming lack of experience. “My relationship with horses was along the lines of admiring them from a distance and giving them carrots when they were safely tied up,” he explains early in this first-person narrative.

But after investing much of his time and even more money, Scott discovers himself the victim of a dishonest trainer. In the beginning, he thinks it a matter of occasional overcharges for such things as non-existent jumping lessons. After he takes action, he discovers the cheating goes far deeper and stretches beyond impacting the performance of his equine assets. Adding to his problems, the trainer, Jody Leeds is the sort to carry a grudge, and has friends in both high and low places.

High Stakes opens just as Scott is giving Leeds the boot. It’s a masterfully depicted sequence, Scott channeling smidgens of doubt about his own actions as we watch him and Leeds butt heads. However much Leeds cajoles and pleads, the trainer gives himself away in a very simple manner. As Scott puts it: “He never asked why.”

Leeds proves one unpleasant leech; he tries to run Scott down while trying to sneak off with his prize mount, the black jumper Energise, then goes into a full-on tirade against his erstwhile victim when caught in the act. “You won’t be able to prove a thing,” he sneers. Later on Leeds manages to make off with Energise anyway thanks to a singularly dense stable security guard, an incident which sets the main plot in motion.

The more I read, the more I felt two things: Anger at this awful Leeds character, and perplexity at how he was able to get away with it. Francis’ setting is one where salt-of-the-earth types like Leeds are preferred over money men with little horse sense like Scott, no matter what the facts or who is in the right. So when Leeds manages to keep possession of Energise via a crude feint-of-hand, Scott is not only powerless to act openly but required to hold his silence even in private on account of what we are told are strict slander laws.

If he wants justice, he will have to go get it himself.

“The law’s a bad thing to take into your own hands,” Scott is warned.

“I don’t exactly aim to lynch anybody,” he replies.

This set up is pretty good, up to par for a writer who always knew how to use his whip hand out of the starter’s gate. As High Stakes goes on, the story maintains decent energy and drama. Scott finds that Leeds is in cahoots with a pair of nasty sorts, one a high-flying bookie with the wonderful name of Ganser Mays, the other a barrel-chested man of mystery quick with his fists, as Scott finds to his peril.

Horse jumping as well as horse racing is at the center of High Stakes.[Image from http://lukedace.co.uk/]

The middle of the novel pits Scott directly against the three, after our protagonist ventures into Leeds’ stables to find out what happened to his horse. It’s here I found the wheels coming off High Stakes, not ruinously, but with a kind of dopey sense of predestination that continues right up to the book’s end. Here, in the first of several instances, Francis withholds what Scott is up to, keeping us in the dark as it were while the plot begins to unfold. Later, much later, Scott explains to his allies what he was up to, but given the risks he takes, and the immediate fallout from it, I was left shaking my head.

The resolution falters into a series of implausible contrivances. You sort of need them to help Scott out of his hole, but the way they come about can’t help but grate. Scott happens to meet someone who has the inside dope on how Leeds is making his big money, chances upon a horse in Miami which is the dead likeness of Energise, and sets up his enemies like pieces in the wind-up toys he designs, employing some willing helpmates and a phony traffic stop which all work with clocklike perfection.

The enemies are definitely nasty sorts that get your attention, but like in another Francis mystery I read recently, Knockdown, you question why they are so consistently ruthless in their activities. They don’t just inflict misery, but do so without a shading of moral ambiguity or of bothersome conscience. I’m glad Francis didn’t make Leeds a more ambiguous adversary, you sort of need his biliousness to push the plot, but as the story goes on, he proves too thick-headed and volatile to be a credible con artist.

The story did pull me in regardless of all that, enough to make a quick read of it. Francis is always great at atmosphere, and made me care about Scott as he worked out his feelings of violation and social rejection in the wake of Leeds’ dismissal. Francis’s novels have a great sweep about them, and High Stakes is no exception. Even when he throws in a left-field romance for Scott, it doesn’t detract as much as you’d expect from the story. He knew how to keep you reading.

More a thriller than a mystery, High Stakes winds down in a satisfactory if pat way. It’s a frustrating if fitting conclusion to a book that seems designed to satisfy a regular Francis reader’s itch, though non-regulars may be left just scratching their heads.

Fortunately, there are other Francis novels out there which have the tension and action of High Stakes and manage at the same time to make much better sense. I’d humbly offer up Proof and Blood Sport as solid first reads for those curious at the lasting success of this former top jockey turned mystery master. High Stakes is okay in its low-cal way, but Francis really did much better work.