“But the truth is you know exactly where you are with a Dick Francis, especially the early ones, which seem to me infinitely superior as works of literature to the razzmatazz stylistics of the highly pulicized and award-winning novels by young X, who jives egocentrically across the page, but fails to make one wish to turn it.... Although the above is clearly mere prejudice, feebly masquerading as taste and judgement, it is still an undeniable fact of my nature that I'm unable to follow any prose or verse that doesn't in some sense tell a story.”