In which I meet my dream man... in a Dick Francis novel

Megan Smith was kind enough to link to my post about Dick Francis in her much more thorough and interesting piece about the late thriller writer on the Blog Her site.  I particularly like the comment she makes about Reflex, my favorite book: "...the main character, Philip Nore, liked women. Not just loved women, had sex with women, or was raised by a woman -- he liked women. That theme carried through many of Francis' novels."

Quite true.  As I've mentioned, I started reading Francis at a young age.  His heroes, physically tough men with surprisingly tender hearts who were committed to fair play in an ugly and corrupt world, made quite an impression on me.  I liked the way they talked to and romanced women... even if I thought the sex bits were kind of gross.

By the way, I stocked up on Francis books whenever my father took my brother and me to the library--Dad had to check out the novels for me since they were marked "A" for Adult, due to those aforementioned love scenes, which were really quite tame.  Afterwards we would head out for pizza.  The waitresses at our favorite restaurant could not get over the spectacle of three otherwise nice people reading and ignoring each other while waiting for dinner, but we all thought it was grand.  (Apologies to the Mariemont library for the grease stains!)