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Jul. 6th, 2021 11:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsRecently we had a friend visiting for a week, and then shortly afterwards went up to stay at a another friend's cottage in Maine for the long July 4th weekend. In addition to the novel phenomenon of spending concentrated time with beloved non-household humans I've also seen a great deal of the ocean, and lots of birds and seals and a baby whale, and generally had a truly wonderful time! but very little of it has been spent on the internet so my booklogging backlog does grow ever longer.
However, bothgenarti and jothra are firmly convinced that Vacation Is A Time To Read Dick Francis Novels. Therefore, upon arrival in Maine a serious consultation took place among the Dick Francis aficionados and I was subsequently handed two paperbacks and informed that these were the Dick Francis that had been hand-selected for me. I managed to finish one of them, Straight, (the other will have to wait for another future vacation later in the summer), which was indeed very enjoyable, in large part because it read delightfully like an escape room write large.
The plot of this one is that the jockey protagonist's kind but secretive elder brother has unexpectedly died in an accident and left his jewelry business to the jockey brother, mysteriously missing either 1.5 million dollars OR 100 diamonds. The secret of what happened with the diamonds is buried somewhere in the brother's house full of weird mystery keys and hollow books and locked cabinets, OR in the brother's mysteriously encoded computer files which may have passwords written down somewhere in the notebooks he left, OR in one of the brother's weird and extremely specific gadgets that do things like 'measure the specific width of a room' and 'beep exactly at 4:20 every afternoon for unspecified reasons that may tie into one of the other mysteries ...'
Admittedly there's probably a bit too much plot to really adapt this book into an escape room, but you could probably also make a very good puzzle-adventure computer game to much the saame effect. Anyway, Jo told me she picked this one because she also thought I would like the jewelry-store staffer who get to come into her own professionally (nonromantically) helping the jockey learn about gemstones, and I do like her quite a lot! But my actual favorite character is the jockey's temporary chauffeur -- the jockey needs a chauffeur because he broke his ankle badly on the racetrack immediately before the action began and spends the entire book on crutches and having to be really conscious of what he physically can and can't do so as not to make the injury worse, another factor I think is quite well done -- his antisocial neighbor who barely speaks and refuses to answer the carphone but nonetheless gets really smug every time he participates in solving the mystery and also saves the protagonist's life several times; IMO the main love interest of the book.
However, both
genarti and jothra are firmly convinced that Vacation Is A Time To Read Dick Francis Novels. Therefore, upon arrival in Maine a serious consultation took place among the Dick Francis aficionados and I was subsequently handed two paperbacks and informed that these were the Dick Francis that had been hand-selected for me. I managed to finish one of them, Straight, (the other will have to wait for another future vacation later in the summer), which was indeed very enjoyable, in large part because it read delightfully like an escape room write large.The plot of this one is that the jockey protagonist's kind but secretive elder brother has unexpectedly died in an accident and left his jewelry business to the jockey brother, mysteriously missing either 1.5 million dollars OR 100 diamonds. The secret of what happened with the diamonds is buried somewhere in the brother's house full of weird mystery keys and hollow books and locked cabinets, OR in the brother's mysteriously encoded computer files which may have passwords written down somewhere in the notebooks he left, OR in one of the brother's weird and extremely specific gadgets that do things like 'measure the specific width of a room' and 'beep exactly at 4:20 every afternoon for unspecified reasons that may tie into one of the other mysteries ...'
Admittedly there's probably a bit too much plot to really adapt this book into an escape room, but you could probably also make a very good puzzle-adventure computer game to much the saame effect. Anyway, Jo told me she picked this one because she also thought I would like the jewelry-store staffer who get to come into her own professionally (nonromantically) helping the jockey learn about gemstones, and I do like her quite a lot! But my actual favorite character is the jockey's temporary chauffeur -- the jockey needs a chauffeur because he broke his ankle badly on the racetrack immediately before the action began and spends the entire book on crutches and having to be really conscious of what he physically can and can't do so as not to make the injury worse, another factor I think is quite well done -- his antisocial neighbor who barely speaks and refuses to answer the carphone but nonetheless gets really smug every time he participates in solving the mystery and also saves the protagonist's life several times; IMO the main love interest of the book.
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Date: 2021-07-07 11:55 am (UTC)I love the image of the serious consultation before you were handed books.
I burned out on Francis when I read like three in a row on an airplane (back when one did things like that) in which all the protagonists were jerks in particularly dudely ways, but I have been making note of the ones you are handed for when I want to get back in!
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Date: 2021-07-16 01:06 am (UTC)