The thrilling world of Dick Francis

Every Christmas, without fail, there'd be a bit of a kerfuffle between my siblings and me over who would get to buy our father a Dick Francis novel as his present. Like most dads, he was difficult to buy for, but we knew he liked Francis so the latest paperback was the easiest and best option. So, over the years, our family accrued quite a collection – a long line of the old, white-jacketed books he'd got himself, tipping over into the colourful 80s and 90s titles we'd buy for him. I think I was about 12 when I started to get into them myself, and although I haven't read one for years, Francis's death yesterday reminded me just how much I used to love them. The thrill, the glamour, the sheer difference of the racing world to my own appealed immensely to me, as did the "lonely hero up against a host of more powerful enemies" theme which seemed to be part of them all. Two of his books made a particularly powerful impression on me: Nerve , and Longshot . Nerve tells the story of the jockey Rob Finn, who's on an inexplicable losing streak. Has he lost his nerve, or is something more sinister going on to make his horses feel so sluggish? While admittedly there's some weird shenanigans with his first cousin Joanna – even as a 12-year-old I thought it was a bit odd to be in love with your cousin – it contains the most fabulous escape scene and subsequent comeback, which I remember in vivid detail today so it shows the impression it must have made. Rob's been kidnapped by the baddie, and strung up by his hands to a harness hook ("a gadget something like a three-pronged anchor") in an abandoned tack room. It's freezing, and to add insult to injury the baddie's chucked a couple of buckets of cold water over him and blindfolded and gagged him with sticking plaster. They don't intend him to survive the night. Rob thinks it through, visualising the anatomy of a harness hook. He imagines that it's probably an old, rusty one, and that if he can throw his weight against the links, twisting his body around, a link in the chain will probably snap. He does this for hours, repeatedly, throughout the night. "I loosened and jerked, loosened and jerked, pushing against the hooks, trying to twist them round with all my strength. The chain rattled, and held. I started doing it rhythmically. Six jerks and a rest." His wrists are rubbed raw, he's freezing, his back is in agony, but eventually he breaks free, and Joanna is soon on her way to the rescue. He goes on to ride in a race the next day. Fantastic stuff. Longshot – in which survival guide writer John Kendall sets off to write the biography of horse trainer Tremayne Vickers, only to have to use his survival skills in order to stay alive – is equally gripping, and I also adored Slay-Ride, which sees someone try to drown our hero in a Norwegian fjord. The family wasn't so keen on the more recent Francises, so I haven't read one for a while, but when I'm next home I'm planning a trip back into the world of horse racing and murder mystery and tough-but-damaged heroes in memory of the author. I just asked my father if he'd really enjoyed receiving a Francis every Christmas or if they were just grin-and-pretend-you-like-it presents, and he told me they were "always interesting, but a bit in one ear and out the other". My mother, however, described them as "chick lit for men" and I think that's a fair summing-up. So here's to you, Mr Francis, and the glimpse into another world you provided to my teenage self.