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A review by theogb451
10 lb. Penalty by Dick Francis
2.5
Not great, not terrible (barring a few 'interesting' bits). Published in '97 it seems the upcoming general election and host of by-elections in the preceding years made Dick and Mary decide to write a political thriller, but the result is excessively simplistic and really loses pace in much of the second half. There are also a number of run-on sentences that didn't help at times and made me wonder if they were struggling keep up the yearly output (the next year was a short story collection including a number of previously published pieces). I don't believe I ever read this one before because at that point in my life (university) I had read so many of his that I didn't really bother with the new ones much.
The main story is of our protagonist's youthful father getting picked by the party to run in a marginal by-election. He is the perfect politician and while this is in-line with the classic Francis setup, that our hero and his familial allies are good people, which is part of the draw of these books, when you merge it with the harsh realities of politics it becomes hard to really keep disbelief suspended. When we add into the antagonist a sort of strawman tabloid journo and a 'behind the scenes' puppet master with nothing at all to explain him or what he's about, it all lacks any real edge of excitement.
While it stays away from huge levels of weird sexism and the like, there's still time for the writing to be wildly out of touch: A boy is referenced as having 'left to join a rap group and grew a beard and got AIDS'. Like, what?! Then there's Hudson Hurst, a high up politician who apparently sported a pony tail and goatee (described as 'one of those silly little moustache and beard combinations that frame a man's mouth and distract you from what he's saying'), which is definitely something that's not happening in UK political circles even now. It's not even like this guy is put up as part of some hippie party, in fact it seems more likely he's in the Tories, based on the other cues we get.
Alongside those howlers is the usual hobby horses of explaining why someone should want to do a sport like horse racing and how great it is generally, as well as sticking the knife into tabloid journalism. The latter leads to an analogy of tabloid journalism being caused by demand that lands so oddly I'll reproduce it here:
<blockquote>
I said, ‘Drug dealers would be out of business if people didn’t want drugs.’
‘What?’
‘The so-called war on drugs is fought against the wrong people. Lock up the users. Lock up the demand. Lock up human nature.’
</blockquote>
The 'war on drugs' is actually fought against users primarily but I can only read this as Francis believing it's fighting supply and, moreover, advocating for all drug users to be flung in jail so drug dealers weep about their lack of customers. Truly a wild piece of philosophy!
The main story is of our protagonist's youthful father getting picked by the party to run in a marginal by-election. He is the perfect politician and while this is in-line with the classic Francis setup, that our hero and his familial allies are good people, which is part of the draw of these books, when you merge it with the harsh realities of politics it becomes hard to really keep disbelief suspended. When we add into the antagonist a sort of strawman tabloid journo and a 'behind the scenes' puppet master with nothing at all to explain him or what he's about, it all lacks any real edge of excitement.
While it stays away from huge levels of weird sexism and the like, there's still time for the writing to be wildly out of touch: A boy is referenced as having 'left to join a rap group and grew a beard and got AIDS'. Like, what?! Then there's Hudson Hurst, a high up politician who apparently sported a pony tail and goatee (described as 'one of those silly little moustache and beard combinations that frame a man's mouth and distract you from what he's saying'), which is definitely something that's not happening in UK political circles even now. It's not even like this guy is put up as part of some hippie party, in fact it seems more likely he's in the Tories, based on the other cues we get.
Alongside those howlers is the usual hobby horses of explaining why someone should want to do a sport like horse racing and how great it is generally, as well as sticking the knife into tabloid journalism. The latter leads to an analogy of tabloid journalism being caused by demand that lands so oddly I'll reproduce it here:
<blockquote>
I said, ‘Drug dealers would be out of business if people didn’t want drugs.’
‘What?’
‘The so-called war on drugs is fought against the wrong people. Lock up the users. Lock up the demand. Lock up human nature.’
</blockquote>
The 'war on drugs' is actually fought against users primarily but I can only read this as Francis believing it's fighting supply and, moreover, advocating for all drug users to be flung in jail so drug dealers weep about their lack of customers. Truly a wild piece of philosophy!