Review: Twice Shy

Twice Shy by Dick Francis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have enjoyed Dick Francis’ formula for stories related to the horse racing industry. Most of his stories mix some aspect of horse racing with some other topics, such as glass blowing, survivalist skills, running a veterinary service, or computer security. This one was an early story in computing and coding. The story revolved around a (view spoiler)[computer program that predicted winning horses. The program was coded and saved to an audio cassette used for data. This kind of thing was a reasonable enough idea for the times. However, Francis took a different tact on this story, stretching it out over many years. To make his story work, that program still had to work correctly, and that data cassette had to be easily read. Anyone living through the business computer industry in the time know that programs like this tend to age poorly, and media like cassettes were quickly replaced by better technology and often difficult to be able to use. This technology-based aspect of the story, in the end unrealistic, kept me from fully enjoying the story. But I will say that the underlying story was quite good. You actually get two stories for the price of one here. In the first, a typical Francis hero prevails against a bad guy who goes to jail. In the second, the bad guy does his time and is freed, and mistakenly goes after our first hero’s relative, (hide spoiler)]…who prevails in a typical Francis manner. In summary, a good Francis story, or two, marred by a mistaken belief that technology change moves slowly. If you are not that into technology, the story is a winner.

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