Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/218358
BOOK REVIEW left: Felix Francis considers leaving behind a nearly twodecade career in teaching physics to become his father's business manager "the best decision" he ever made. He served in that role for 14 years before stepping up to assume the authorship of Dick Francis' novels. below left: After growing up riding and reading with his famous father Dick Francis, in 2006 Felix took over the writing of his dad's legendary series of mystery novels set in Britain's horse racing world. with four legs that eats money! I don't really miss the riding, to be honest. I was always of the belief that both ends were dangerous and the middle was uncomfortable. What kind of book can be found on your bedside table? I'm not very good at reading mysteries by other writers. I don't want to be even subconsciously stealing other people's ideas. I mostly read biographies and histories and some fiction, and I enjoy sports books and autobiographies. Two of my all-time favorite books are The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars, by Patrick Hennessey and Vulcan 607: The Epic Story of the Most Remarkable British Air Attack Since WWII, about the airplane and its role in the Falklands War in the 1970s. When did you first read one of your father's books? I was about 13 when I read the newest one then, which was Odds Against, or might have been Flying Finish. I was so excited that I had all the others to go back to. Then, after I read them as they were being written, I would say, "Hurry up and get on with it. I want to know what happens!" You took a very different route from your father in studying science. What brought you back to the family business of writing? I was a physics teacher for 17 years and would have gone on doing it, but my [parents] had moved to Florida, to get away from the cold and damp. My mother had polio when she was 26, and it left her with depleted chest muscles, so breathing was not easy for her. C H RO N O F H O R S E .CO M W INTER 2013 89