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The young colts stuck out their necks and strove to be the first as they would have done in a wild herd on an unrailed plain, the primaeval instinct flashing there undiluted on the civilised track. The very essence of racing, I thought. The untamed force that made it all possible. Exciting, moving ... beautiful.

A safe bet with Dick Francis is that he will somehow work an angle in his books that mentions his first and enduring love for horses and racing, even when the subject of the story is from an entirely different field of activity.
What exactly do racing and wine selling have in common? You might argue that there is heavy drinking involved, both in celebration of victory or in disappointment over failure. Trainers drink after a long day on the moors or to soften the owners who come to ask about their horses. Sponsors in private viewing boxes serve champagne and hard liquor to their guests. The crowds assault the beer stands in between races and betting. Alcohol greases the wheels of enterprise and entertainment. And this is where Tony Beach enters the picture.

He owns a small wine boutique in a village from the middle of the racing world [in Berkshire, I think]. He sells directly in the shop or delivers at home and, occasionally, he caters for private events.
Tony Beach comes from local gentry preoccupied with horses, in particular his mother who is a Master of the Hunt, a particularly British institution. His father, an army officer decorated for courage beyond the call of duty, died prematurely in a steeplechase accident, leaving deep scars on the mind of his son.
Suspecting that he lacks the courage of his father and grandfather, Tony seeks an occupation that will not put his mettle to the test. He likes to fade into the background, be pleasant and informative to customers and to avoid confrontations. His career choice was unplanned and arose from a holiday near Bordeaux where, instead of polishing his language skills, Tony discovers a talent for wine tasting and a wine merchant who offers to apprentice him in the trade.

Years later, Tony’s boutique does well enough for his modest needs, which includes building up the house of their dreams for his wife. It all comes crashing down when she dies from pregnancy complications. Life can be cruel even to those who try to hide away from conflict and trouble. Conflict and trouble who return with a vengeance as Tony returns to work and tries to pick up the broken pieces of his dreams.

The novel debuts with an uncharacteristically gory scene for a Dick Francis thriller. Multiple guests at an annual end of season celebration held by a successful owner die when a runaway heavy vehicle crashes into the tent hosting the lunch party. Tony Beach, who provided drinks and glassware to the event, is surprised on the outside at the key moment of the accident.
The need to act in order to help the injured force the man to overcome his reticence. Subsequent police investigations reveal another hidden talent of our wine merchant: he has a photographic memory and a keen eye for details about people, a way of reading their minds that is helpful in his wine trade.

Initially, I thought the main plot will be the investigation of the incident as a planned terrorist attack, since among the victims were a wealthy sheikh and his bodyguards. However, the plot thickens considerably when Tony visits a local restaurant owned by another victim, where complaints about watered whisky and counterfeit wine bottles are frequent. Once again, Tony’s particular talents come into play, this time his ability to identify import wines in a blind tasting.

He said, ‘You sell knowledge, don’t you, as much as wine?�
‘Yeah. And pleasure. And human contact. Anything you can’t get from a supermarket.�

Without getting into spoilerish revelations, Tony gets his hands full with additional tasks when his friends ask for a little help with training horses for the hospitalized host of the party, continue his liquor tasting in every bar from the county and even investigate some missing tankers that carry � guess what? � raw whisky from Scottish distilleries to English bottlers.
Our hero’s life gets so interesting that he gets mugged, shot at, burglarized and chased at gunpoint around an empty racetrack. All this before he has the faintest idea what kind of viper’s nest he has stirred.

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Proof is one of the best titles in a very long list that includes extremely few real duds, but numerous copycats of a successful formula. Francis recycles a lot of his basic plots and uses a limited number of stock characters, usually a timid, reluctant yet very competent hero versus a bully type of adversary that believes violence is the best way to get results in business.
What these books may lack in terms of surprises are more than compensated by the obvious passion for the racing world, by the empathy displayed in character interaction, by the solid research done into each particular field of activity described in the book and by the engaging first person narrator.

What sets ‘Proof� apart from its peers is the way several different plot lines are brought together, the higher percentage of actual action scenes, the friendship between Tony and Gerard [an older private investigator into white-collar industrial crime] that replaces the usual romantic sub-plot, the way the villain is revealed from his very first entry into the limelight, yet his identity remains a mystery. And something that can get overlooked in a Dick Francis novel, even as it always lurks in the subtext: his subtle sense of humour:

Be grateful for villany, I thought. The jobs of millions depended on it, Gerard’s included. Police, lawyers, tax inspectors, prison warders, court officials, security guards, locksmiths and people making burglar alarms ...
Where would they be the world over but for the multiple faces of Cain.

There’s a memorable scene involving a matron from a local bar that terrifies both her clients and her husband, but my favorite moments are the self-deprecating, stiff-upper lip quips between Tony and Gerard as they lie bleeding in a parking lot or as they try to minimize the hair rising terrors they have gone through.

I stopped his car beside mine. We both got out. We stood looking at each other, almost awkwardly. After such intensity there seemed to be no suitable farewell.
‘I’m in your debt,� he said.
I shook my head. ‘Other way round.�

Dick Francis doesn’t normally lets character do sequels, but I wouldn’t mind meeting Tony Beach somewhere down the line. I might even buy a few good bottles of red based on his advice.