Move Director Thomas Lyon Faces Major Trouble in Wild Horses

This is among the better of the later Dick Francis novels. The protagonist is a young film director, Thomas Lyon, who finally has the chance to make a major motion picture. It's is big chance, and if he screws it up, he most likely won't get another. Lyon is clearly talented enough to make a very good movie, but there are all sorts of obstacles in his way, including people who desperately do not want this movie to be made and who will stop at nothing to see that it isn't.

The movie is being filmed on location in Newmarket, a major horse racing center, and is loosely based on a scandal and an unsolved mystery that occurred in the local racing world twenty-six years earlier. A beautiful young woman was found hanged, and it was never determined whether she was murdered or committed suicide.

Newmarket is also home to Valentine Clark, a former blacksmith-turned-newspaperman who had once shod the horses trained by Lyon's grandfather. Lyon has known Clark since he was a small boy. Clark is now dying and is largely incoherent, but mistaking Thomas for a priest, he makes a confusing deathbed confession.

Lyon has no idea what the confession means and, of course, is preoccupied with trying to make his movie on time and under budget. But then Clark dies and this sets off a chain of events that will seriously impact Thomas Lyon and the film he is attempting to make.

Lyon is an appealing protagonist and I found the details of the film making business to be interesting. The plot is entertaining and credible, although it lacks the malevolent villain that is so key to many of Francis's novels. All in all, a good, quick read.