sholio: sun on winter trees (Default)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote in [community profile] yuletide 2022-10-14 10:52 pm (UTC)

Smokescreen by Dick Francis

Title: Smokescreen (Dick Francis)

Media: Book

Approx length: Short novel length (Amazon Kindle says 276 pages)

Where to find it: Still in print, available in ebook and a variety of cheap mass-market editions, probably at most libraries as well. Francis's books are usually pretty easy to acquire from your usual book sources.

What is it, in summary?: A thriller about a British actor and stuntman who ends up in South Africa with some mysterious person or persons trying to kill him while he investigates why his godmother's racing stable has suddenly started losing races. Dick Francis is generally known for thrillers about horse racing, but in this book the racing aspect is secondary to the show biz/murder mystery plot. I wrote about the book here - spoilers in comments, but not in the body of the post.

What do you love about it?: I enjoy most of Francis's books, but this one (which I only read for the first time this fall) became an insta-fave for its twisty and nicely plotted mystery, the really likable characters, and an absolutely fantastic hurt/comfort climax. The setting is also very vivid and the book leans into it hard. If you enjoy thriller/mystery type books and want to pick up a short book fandom for Yuletide, this might be a good one to try! (For further enticement, there's a very catnippy enemies-to-friends/lovers slash pairing.)

What sort of things are you likely to request for it?: You can read my requests here! I mainly just want "more book", but some of the specific things I'm asking for are hurt/comfort, more aftermath, original casefic involving the book's characters, and more of the book's slashy enemies-to-sort-of-friends(/potentially lovers) relationship.

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests, or that showcase particular characters and relationships?: It's just one book, so not really.

Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence): The book (written in 1971) takes place in South Africa during apartheid. I felt the parts of the book that touched on the political issues were reasonably well handled, but this is coming from a white USian reader so YMMV.

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