Felix is No Dick

Nope, as I said in a post last week, Felix Francis is good, but he's not at all as good as his father. I finished Damage this weekend, and although it was good, it wasn't a five star story like many of his father's are. Why? Several reasons.

First, it's not original. My favorite comic (of all time) is the Bloom County about there not being any truly original ideas anymore (I posted it at the end of this post for you). The fact that Felix is not using an original idea is a problem with me. It's as if he's trying to reproduce a story and he's not done it very well. I mentioned this in last week's post as well (see here).

I had to create a form for our business a few years ago. When I had come up with just the right form on my computer my boss told me, "Go and copy it about 10 times and see just how legible all those lines and shaded areas become." I'm glad I did it. The text became illegible in the shaded regions after just a few copies. They would have become illegible in our field locations as well. This is the way Damage felt. As if after several copies the story became fuzzy and not as good as the original. And yes, I blurred the image above for just this reason.

Secondly, he uses cheap and easy mystery/thriller techniques. Guess what? The main character, Jeff Hinkley, gets hit by a car and gets hurt. Happens in most of his books. He happens to put a tracking device in a rugby ball, the perfect vehicle for throwing it out a train window later? How did he know he'd have to do that! Additionally, Jeff figures out who the villain is about three quarters the way through the book, but Felix doesn't let the reader in on it till the end. He has Jeff and his wife sit outside the villains house for a full day and never let's his main character mention to the reader who it is they are watching. They follow him, they discuss him with others, and always Felix writes "I told him what I thought," or "I showed him the proof that I had against our target." It's a pathetic way to build suspense and it doesn't work in this case at all. If anything it only gets the reader mad.

I have given (and will continue to give) Felix Francis the benefit of the doubt because I love reading Dick Francis' books and wish that there were new ones to read. But this has me wondering if I should give up on the endeavor. Three star at best. Perhaps two is more realistic. I hope that Vincent Lardo offers a better bridge to more from my favorite authors than Felix.

(Here is that comic I mentioned)