Thomas Lyon is a thirty-year-old movie director working on a film for a major Hollywood studio. Dick Francis's very
engaging novel follows Thomas into a world of British horse
racing, super stars, apparent suicide and hidden murder.
Thomas's film will feature world-renowned mega-star Nash Roarke, and the film's story is based on a novel by a very high-strung writer who adapts his story for the screenplay. The novel, in turn, is a fictionalized version of a mysterious apparent-suicide that occurred decades earlier. A prominent racing official's wife was found hanged in a horse stable, and although the official himself was never prosecuted for the crime, his wife's mysterious death was never satisfactorily explained.
Lyon himself grew up around
horses and the racing world is second nature to him. The story "Wild Horses" opens as Lyon's old and dear friend named Valentine, is on his death bed. Valentine is a former blacksmith who later became a famous writer of racing news and gossip articles for the British racing world. He knew Thomas Lyon since he was a lad, and shoed many of the horses Thomas himself rode when he was a jockey--that is, before Thomas grew too tall to make racing his career and instead took up filmmaking.
Mysteriously, Valentine, in his delirium as death approaches, mistakes Thomas for a priest and offers a baffling confession about some ancient wrongs, including the ominous words, "I killed the Cornish boy..." and "I gave the knife to Derry." He begs Thomas to absolve him before he dies, and Lyons does so out of love for his friend, feeling the pangs of guilt for the pretense. He mentions to the elderly sister who lives with Valentine that her brother asked for a priest, but she dismisses it, saying that her brother never was religious to her recollection.
Dorothea, the sister, has always appreciated Thomas's friendship with her brother, especially his willingness to read to him when Valentine became too blind. Because of this kindness, the old man bequeaths to Lyon his collection of books and papers (most of them having to do with racing history and the biographies of racing legends). This bequest riles Dorothea's obnoxious son, Paul, who does his best to rid the family of Thomas's influence, over his mother's strong objections.
The descriptions of filmmaking that accompany the story are very informative and enjoyable, as Lyon faces the challenges of budget demands from the movie moguls, the expectation of O'Hara, his producer, who is a kind of father figure, and the animus between Lyon and the screenwriter, who complains stridently about his story being butchered for the benefit of box office appeal.
As the story progresses, and Thomas deals with Valentine's death, it isn't long before the mystery of the racing official's wife's hanging crops up again and again. For one thing, the movie doesn't as yet have an ending, because the novel's author left the story hanging as to the cause of the death. And in the process of working on the motivation for a possible murder, bizarre things begin to take place. Several knife attacks on the stunt double of Nash Roarke the star, as well as Thomas himself, take place, along with numerous threatening notes that demand the abandonment of the film.
To make matters worse, Dorothea is also attacked and slashed almost to death, and her home is ransacked. It is clear that someone involved with the original hanging wants certain elements surrounding the woman's death to remain hidden forever.
Dorothea's and Valentine's family doctor becomes friends with Thomas and assists him in tracing clues, as does a local knife expert who educates Thomas on the British laws concerning the use and ownership of dangerous weapons. Lyon also ends up meeting the racing official Wells himself, along with his new family. It becomes apparent that Wells has much to hide, and the survivors of his dead wife's family also turn up to put up roadblocks, including the fact that the rancorous novelist is himself romantically involved with one of them.
With the help of Wells's teenage daughter, Lyons eventually cracks the case when clippings and photos from Valentine's effects lead him to a decades-old experiment in asphyxia that some of the former Mrs. Wells's friends tried on her to test an article they'd come across describing its use for the purpose of sexual arousal. When the woman was held by the throat to stop the air supply, things got out of hand, and the other youngsters covered up her death by faking her suicide. Valentine, who had been secretly in love with the Wells woman, killed one of the youngsters, "The Cornish Boy," in a rage of grief.
Loaded with wonderful scenes and fascinating insights, "Wild Horses" was a riveting, informative novel, like most of Dick Francis's work.