In memoriam Dick Francis (1920-2010)

By my count the 43rd Dick Francis novel, Crossfire (co-authored by his son Felix and published this year) is dedicated "to the memory of Dick Francis, the greatest father and friend a man could ever have."
    While we can hope that Dick Francis left some plots for his son to work into a few more novels, or that Felix is capable of continuing up to snuff on his own, we are sad at the news of Dick Francis's passing. We felt that we knew you, so consistently good and brave were your narrator heroes, right down to Crossfire's Captain Thomas Forsyth of the Grenadier Guards¹, lately from Afghanistan, where an IED had taken his right leg below the knee. So many of your heroes were wounded.
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1. Crossfire is also dedicated to "the men and women of the British forces who have lost limbs in Afghanistan. For them the battle is never over."