DRIVING FORCE Is a Solid Novel from Dick Francis, But Not One of His Best

Freddie Croft is an ex-jockey who, since retiring, has built a very profitable business transporting horses to races and back for their owners. Freddie loved being a jockey and this is a way of keeping his hand in the game, at least to some extent. He runs a pretty tight ship, but his whole enterprise is placed in jeopardy when one of his drivers violates one of Freddie's most important rules and picks up a hitchhiker. When the driver reaches the point where his passenger was to leave the horse van, the driver discovers that the passenger has died. Not knowing what else to do, he drives the van and the body back to Freddie's farm and has to face the music.

The dead body in the truck opens the door to a run of mysteries and bad fortune for Croft and his operation. He discovers that someone has been using his vans to smuggle something, but he doesn't know what it is or was. As the mystery deepens, someone else will die and Freddie Croft will find himself in mortal danger.

This is a fairly typical Dick Francis novel although it lacks the tension of many of the better books in the series. This may result from the fact that there is no nasty, violent, amoral villain operating behind the scenes as there often is in these novels. In consequence, although some bad things happen to Freddie, the reader doesn't sense the danger here that you usually do in one of these books.

Francis often uses these novels to explore various aspects of the racing world and in this case, we get a thorough education about the business of transporting horses back and forth between races and other venues. It's something so mundane that most people wouldn't even think about it and yet, of course, it's an absolutely vital function. We also learn a fair deal--perhaps too much, actually, about viruses, computer and otherwise, although this information is now somewhat dated. Still, it's a pleasant read, and fans of the series will no doubt enjoy it.