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Forfeit by Dick Francis
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rachelmanija mentioned in a past conversation that this book had a particular interesting trope in it. I couldn't remember if I'd ever read it. Turns out I have, but not at all recently - I vaguely remembered it in a faint deja-vu kind of way as it went along, but nothing specific - and this might even be one of the Dick Francis books I read in my teens. (I read a number of them during my teenage "read all the things" phase, but at the time never latched onto Francis as an author I particularly realized I enjoyed. I appreciate him a lot more now.)I really loved this book, but it's difficult to talk about without spoiling various aspects of the premise that are revealed slowly as it goes along, so I'll put the initial discussion under a cut for people who like no spoilers at all, and then a couple of specific ending spoilers under a different cut.
This book has one of the most unusual premises I've ever read in a book in the spy/mystery/thriller genre. The hero in this book is the primary caretaker for his profoundly disabled wife. Paralyzed with polio (this was written in the late 60s), she can't move anything below the neck, except a few limited movements of her left hand, and relies on an iron lung to breathe. I was deeply impressed with how sympathetic and nuanced she was, and the relationship was (particularly to find in a book from the 1960s, but even by modern standards). There were aspects of it, from caregiver fatigue to the wife's attempts to put on a Saintly Victim facade to avoid upsetting the people she depends on for every aspect of her physical health and survival, that I rarely see in fiction and were so well depicted here there almost had to be some firsthand experience involved in some way.
In general, Francis is very sympathetic towards his female characters, something I really love about his books and find unusual in books in this genre written in the era he was writing in. This book not only handles the disability aspect well, I felt, but also dealt sympathetically with another trope that is usually a hard sell for me: cheating. The hero, unable to have sex with his wife - which (again in an unusually nuanced portrayal) is presented as impossible not because of her disability, but because she doesn't really like sex all that much anyway and the difficulty/fear/pain of doing it while paralyzed from the neck down and unable to breathe on her own pushes it over the edge into don't-go-there territory for her - carries on a series of affairs, while feeling deeply guilty about it. His current mistress is a biracial graphic artist with a clear-eyed, realistic view of their mutually beneficial fuckbuddies arrangement, though he has also allowed her to believe that he's in an unhappy marriage to a wealthy woman rather than telling her the actual circumstances. She is also a fully rounded character whose cool levelheadedness is portrayed as a virtue rather than coldness.
Meanwhile, he is actually scraping financial bottom trying to pay for his wife's caregivers and medical assistive devices, so he enters into an unwise deal that sucks him down into the book's main plot and eventually endangers both wife and mistress.
The trope Rachel mentioned that this book contains is "drugged character is forced to perform plot-critical Important Activities while struggling to focus or concentrate or remember what they're trying to do." And she's right, this book does it very well, both in emotional build-up so you spend that entire sequence in an edge-of-seat state of PLEASE DON'T FUCK THIS UP, DUDE and also in actual execution of the scene.
I'm still faintly boggling that this book, published in 1969, handles disability better than a lot of contemporary books and TV shows. From the caregiver's perspective, admittedly, but you never feel a lack of authorial sympathy for the wife; she is a fully rounded character and never an object of pity or scorn, nor is there any hint that the hero considers her a burden (though she worries about that).
And then, as mentioned, the ending spoilers, which I also loved.
The "drugged and having to do things" aspect of the book obviously involves Elizabeth and her inability to breathe without the iron lung, leaving her utterly dependent on the people around her for the most basic aspects of her survival. This is something I low-key have a Thing for if it's done right (some may remember that I once wrote a fanfic in which a temporarily paralyzed character's friends have to breathe for them until they can breathe on their own again) and I think this book absolutely hit the particular aspects of that scenario that make it a narrative kink for me, which includes sympathetically conveying the absolute bone-chilling terror of actually being in that situation. (Not that it matters IMHO, but this is actually an #ownvoices kind of kink for me, fyi - I mean, not that exact scenario, and not that extreme, but that general kind of thing. Which I mention only in case anyone wants to argue about it in the comments. If it's a nope-out for you for any reason, I totally get that - you are valid! If you think it's ableist that I'm into it? Let's not go there. You won't win that argument.)
The mental image of Elizabeth's stark-faced terror and stoicism and courage in the face of having her iron lung shut off for a plot-necessary reason, unable to even spare the breath to speak since she can only breathe on her own for a few minutes before suffocating, is one of those images that is firmly embedded in my mind. Elizabeth doesn't actually do anything physical in this book except lie there because she can't, but she is one hell of a character: brave and angry and damaged and resourceful. (I think one of the other Elizabeth things that really hit me where I live is that she can't afford to become truly angry because the iron lung breathes for her at a measured rate, and if she freaks out, she runs out of air. So she has to control herself at all times. And the narrator recognizes this, and recognizes when she's fighting for control because she can't afford to lose it.)
Anyway, so yeah, that worked for me rather profoundly. The other thing I really loved about the book and didn't see coming is that the entire wife-husband-mistress love triangle is resolved eventually, after all the various aspects of the truth come out for all parties involved, with a mutually agreed-upon poly relationship.
At various points in the book, I thought the author was going to resolve the fundamentally unresolvable conflict of the protagonist's life in classic "we're told this is a happy ending by authorial fiat" fashion, by either having Elizabeth die tragically or having Gail (the mistress) murdered by someone mistaking her for his wife. But nope, instead they had to work it out like grownups.
As of the end of the book, Elizabeth and Gail haven't met, but I like to think they do eventually meet; I think they'd be friends.
I definitely think this is among my favorite of Francis's books.
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On a random family side note, my husband's grandmother was partly paralyzed from polio - though not profoundly; she could still walk with assistive devices. She contracted it while pregnant and carried his mother to term in an iron lung.
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Obligatory plug for Reflex (1981), which may still be my favorite Francis.
But nope, instead they had to work it out like grownups.
Yay!
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I remember reading this book and I do recall that it was pretty fantastic. I should read it again! Thanks for the rec!
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I know one (older) lady who had polio as a child; though the consequences were not as profound as in the book, to this day she has exercises she does every morning for her legs.
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The sequence where the hero has to carry her downstairs with her breathing on her own is particularly terrifying because not only everything, but the villains forced him to drink a glass of whiskey so he is literally drunk.
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I have to admit that "get drunk or we'll kill your wife" is a novel one as threats go. (And as soon as I laid it out like that, OF COURSE I immediately thought of Ward. LOL.)that drunk if they were the size of an average guy. I mean, it would completely trash me, but I'm 5'1". I guess the "all at once" aspect is probably a big factor, though. The same amount sipped slowly over several hours probably wouldn't do it to that extent.
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My own favorite by Francis: probably Proof. Young-ish widower who sells wine, finds a scam of ordinary wines being passed off as fancy-shmancy stuff. I like how it deals with grief, and how realistic the violence is.
That was one of the author's strengths: making the violence both plausible (in what the characters can do / will do) and horrifying.
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Dick Francis
His books are very unusual for mysteries of that era, in that there is usually a romantic sub-plot. (Instead of the usual hot babe/sex sub-plot.)
It's said that the whole family, including wife Mary and sons Felix and Merrick, contributed to the books. Mary did a lot of research, and I seem to recall they all brainstormed plots and such around the dinner table.
Hard to pick a favorite, though.
Is it Rat Race, where the air taxi pilot gets mixed up with both a beautiful twin and dangerous goings on?
Or perhaps it's Reflex, whose jockey protagonist finds trouble while pursuing his photographic hobby (and clues to the whereabouts of a heretofore unknown younger sister)?
Or could it be the whole Sid Halley saga - an involuntarily ex-jockey (due to injury) turned lackadaisical investigator starts off the first book with a bullet in his belly, and ends up with a Marina.
Luckily, I don't have to pick just one. Hm, I think I'll read Decider next. :D
(Try John Malcolm's Tim Simpson mysteries. They're hard to find, but well worth the effort.)
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