Lead Review

• Book: Guilty Not Guilty
• Location: London, Oxfordshire, Welsh Borders
• Author: Felix Francis

Review Author: Tina Hartas

Felix Francis is the son of Dick Francis, the legendary writer of horse racing mysteries. He carries on the family tradition, albeit in an at times grittier manner. Guilty Not Guilty is his ninth solo book – having collaborated with his late father on four. Dick Francis himself wrote a very impressive forty books! I guess they can be a little formulaic in style, but each one is stand alone.

In Guilty Not Guilty, Bill Russell is an honorary steward working at a race meeting when he gets a visit from a police detective. He is told that his wife has been found strangled and that his brother in law, Joe, has accused him of the murder. He is taken away for questioning. His brother, an eminent QC, advises him and they hatch a plan to prove his innocence – despite the building circumstantial evidence. Bill suspects the very unpleasant Joe of being the perpetrator but his first task is to prove to the police that he couldn’t have committed the crime before getting them to look in another direction for the killer.

Guilty Not Guilty is a very British murder mystery. It is centred amongst the countryside horse racing fraternity. Horse racing to the British landed class is a very traditional sport with behaviours and mores of its own. At one stage Bill goes off to visit his elderly parents in where else but their unheated castle in the Welsh Borders. He shakes hands when he meets his father – as he has done since his childhood. No hugging here…Emotions are not expressed (which probably does Bill no good in his interviews withe police where he perhaps comes over as somewhat heartless, even though he is deeply grieving).

The story moves on to a very British court procedural as the suspect is put on trial for the murder of Amelia Russell. We (the readers) are swung one way and then the other (as are the jurors) by the persuasive powers of both sets of counsel. Eventually a verdict is reached.

But don’t tune out quite yet…

Guilty Not Guilty is a really good read from a highly professional writer.

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