If the horsey stuff is to be expected, the real surprise of Comeback is that it’s well-written—even daringly written, by the standards of the genre... At least one writer has suggested that Francis’ wife, Mary, who died in 2000, may have actually written these books—or had an extraordinary literary effect on them. That is one of those truths that Francis himself never marched straight up to. But as for the novelist or novelists known as Dick Francis, let us say this: He, or they, could really, really write.