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Jun. 13th, 2021 10:58 pmTo the Hilt is one of ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
genarti's favorite Dick Francis novels, so I ended up checking it out earlier this year when I needed to test my e-reader's library book functionality and couldn't remember anything else on my list that was immediately available.
To The Hilt is about a man who just wants to paint the core of the human spirit as represented through golf and instead is forced by circumstances to solve an embezzlement case, temporarily stealing a racehorse along the way. To be honest I have already forgotten much of the details of the actual plot; the important elements that I do remember:
- protagonist Alexander Kinloch's intense and profound Golf Art
(I painted the passions of golf as much as its physical scenery, and I'd learned it was the raw emotion, the conflict within the self, that sold the pictures [...] It was golfers who bought my work, and they bought it for its core of struggle)
- Chris Young, Alexander's PI sidekick/bodyguard, a Master Of Disguise who spends most of his time onscreen posing as Alexander's glamorous secretary and/or girlfriend
(Emily eyed Chris with obvious speculation, not doubting his/her gender but wondering if the tall leggy dark-haired presence in black tights, short inappropriate skirt and baggy black sweater was a serious girlfriend, in view of the glue that kept him ever and only a short pace away from my side. Unsurprisingly, Alexander and Chris appear to be responsible for more than half the Dick Francis fanfics on the AO3)
- the vehement feud between Alexander's uncle, a Scottish laird who has hidden several priceless historical treasures in and around his home, and the elderly museum appraisers who are determined to capture them for cultural heritage institutions No Matter What It Takes; this is absolutely irrelevant to the plot but significant to the book because the elderly museum appraiser is also, delightfully, Alexander's Artistic Muse
- the amazingly over-the-top sequence at the end in which ( spoilers )
Of all the Dick Francises I've read so far, this is definitely the one that surprised me the most; I vaguely knew to expect and look forward to Chris Young, but had no way to prepare for the passions of golf.
genarti's favorite Dick Francis novels, so I ended up checking it out earlier this year when I needed to test my e-reader's library book functionality and couldn't remember anything else on my list that was immediately available. To The Hilt is about a man who just wants to paint the core of the human spirit as represented through golf and instead is forced by circumstances to solve an embezzlement case, temporarily stealing a racehorse along the way. To be honest I have already forgotten much of the details of the actual plot; the important elements that I do remember:
- protagonist Alexander Kinloch's intense and profound Golf Art
(I painted the passions of golf as much as its physical scenery, and I'd learned it was the raw emotion, the conflict within the self, that sold the pictures [...] It was golfers who bought my work, and they bought it for its core of struggle)
- Chris Young, Alexander's PI sidekick/bodyguard, a Master Of Disguise who spends most of his time onscreen posing as Alexander's glamorous secretary and/or girlfriend
(Emily eyed Chris with obvious speculation, not doubting his/her gender but wondering if the tall leggy dark-haired presence in black tights, short inappropriate skirt and baggy black sweater was a serious girlfriend, in view of the glue that kept him ever and only a short pace away from my side. Unsurprisingly, Alexander and Chris appear to be responsible for more than half the Dick Francis fanfics on the AO3)
- the vehement feud between Alexander's uncle, a Scottish laird who has hidden several priceless historical treasures in and around his home, and the elderly museum appraisers who are determined to capture them for cultural heritage institutions No Matter What It Takes; this is absolutely irrelevant to the plot but significant to the book because the elderly museum appraiser is also, delightfully, Alexander's Artistic Muse
- the amazingly over-the-top sequence at the end in which ( spoilers )
Of all the Dick Francises I've read so far, this is definitely the one that surprised me the most; I vaguely knew to expect and look forward to Chris Young, but had no way to prepare for the passions of golf.
