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Whumptober #29: Flying Finish tag
Not what I was planning on writing, but last night I finished Dick Francis's Flying Finish and it got me by the neck and before I knew it I was writing a tag. Also, the scene that dropped into my brain after I finished the book worked pretty well, with a bit of tweaking, for today's Whumptober prompt.
No. 29: "I only sink deeper the deeper I think."
Scented Candle | Troubled Past Resurfacing | "What happened to me?"
Homing Instinct (2332 words) by Sholio
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Flying Finish - Dick Francis
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Henry Grey (Flying Finish), Patrick (Flying Finish), Gabriella Barzina (Flying Finish)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Aftermath, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Whumptober 2023
Summary: Aftermath for "Flying Finish," because the book ended too soon.
This probably doesn't stand on its own very well, and spoils a neat twist in the climax. That being said, if you like the idea of a book about a lonely, emotionally distant pilot/jockey (look, it's a Dick Francis book, okay) being adopted by friendly smugglers who smuggle for good and noble reasons, plus lots of airplane hijinks, have I got the book for you.
(Also, I now know enough about loading racehorses on airplanes for transport that I feel like I need to write a Biggles fic about it.)
No. 29: "I only sink deeper the deeper I think."
Scented Candle | Troubled Past Resurfacing | "What happened to me?"
Homing Instinct (2332 words) by Sholio
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Flying Finish - Dick Francis
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Henry Grey (Flying Finish), Patrick (Flying Finish), Gabriella Barzina (Flying Finish)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Aftermath, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Whumptober 2023
Summary: Aftermath for "Flying Finish," because the book ended too soon.
This probably doesn't stand on its own very well, and spoils a neat twist in the climax. That being said, if you like the idea of a book about a lonely, emotionally distant pilot/jockey (look, it's a Dick Francis book, okay) being adopted by friendly smugglers who smuggle for good and noble reasons, plus lots of airplane hijinks, have I got the book for you.
(Also, I now know enough about loading racehorses on airplanes for transport that I feel like I need to write a Biggles fic about it.)
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(Yes, that was the main takeaway.)
The book does sound interesting I may check it out <3
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Will definitely consider checking the book out too; it sounds quite good fun.
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spoilers for Flying Finish
And it absolutely would make a spectacular Biggles fic. I am sure Bertie could rope Biggles into flying bloodstock for one reason or another, and accidentally stumble across a scheme smuggling Communist agents across borders disguised as grooms - and superweapons! It really is a very Biggles scheme, and an even more Biggles solution, though of course I'm sure Biggles can fly a DC-4 in his sleep...
Re: spoilers for Flying Finish
But yeah, I loved how Henry was constructed as a character - the things that isolate him are also the things that save him, and then throwing himself out of his everyday life allows him to meet more people he clicks with better and also recognize how some of the people he already knows (like the guy who's bending over backwards to give him a flying job) really do like him too! And Patrick is delightful. When I described the plot of this book to
The entire flying/trying to land at night sequence is just so excellent, too! It was a really fantastic problem, between the plane that's much bigger than he's used to handling, the fact that he has no idea where he is (all of his work to try to find some landmarks he recognizes at night so he can just get oriented was great, and especially when he hits the coast and it's the *wrong coast*; that was so visceral and scary) - and he has to intentionally avoid large airports because he can't alert the other traffic to where he is due to the disabled radio, so flying through a populated area is actually worse for him in some ways than if it was completely deserted! I can practically see Francis gleefully ticking off ways to remove all his sources of help so he has to just keep flying until he's exhausted ...
As well as being a terrific read on its own, various things this book made me want Biggles fic to provide immediately:
- Biggles & co being hired to transport large livestock. Could be horses (I love the idea that Bertie's involved; maybe someone is stealing and smuggling expensive racehorses, EvS could be involved with that one too...), could be cattle flying to an experimental farm colony on an island, could be just about anything.
- Biggles forced to land a plane at night in an unfamiliar place. Of course, he's done this about 1500 times already in the books, but that exact scenario of *not being able to find a runway when you really need one* is so visceral and awful, there's got to be some way to inflict it on him properly.
And perhaps most of all:
- Biggles having to fly a plane, possibly at gunpoint, while he knows someone close to him is shot and bleeding out, and/or dead (he thinks) in the back. I am first of all amazed that this never happened in canon, at least not in a book I've read yet, but it would make an amazing fic ...
Re: spoilers for Flying Finish
The book was completely unputdownable once I got started, and the clocks went back yesterday so I automatically woke up an hour early today, so plenty of bonus reading time! And oh yes, Patrick is absolutely Henry's Algy, and I completely bought the 'presumed dead' thing, I was so sad about that and then he came back, it was perfect. I thought maybe after Gabrielle survived we'd used up our quota for loveable characters surviving being shot.
Re: spoilers for Flying Finish
Oh, that's true! But we don't see much of it because Biggles inconveniently passes out ... I want ALL the outside POV on that, incidentally. Actually I hadn't really thought about how awful it must have been for Bertie, who can't even be back there to help with Biggles but has to keep flying the plane and trying not to get shot at ...
The horse going berserk in the air was really terrifying, and I was actually very surprised that the mares in the final sequence stayed calm throughout, especially with blood and dead bodies and gunshots all over the place! I was fully expecting that the early horse-berserker scene was a Chekhov's gun for the climax, but I suppose that it would have been just one too many things for poor Henry to deal with on his own at that point in time. It was tense enough whenever he had to leave the plane on autopilot and climb over all the chains and everything to get into the back, knowing he couldn't get back quickly if anything went wrong; that was such a Biggles-ish detail, too.
And oh yes, Patrick is absolutely Henry's Algy, and I completely bought the 'presumed dead' thing, I was so sad about that and then he came back, it was perfect.
YESSSS. I 100% believed in the death and was absolutely gut-punched. I think it had been really well set up by the flight crew getting shot and finding out that Simon was almost certainly dead (which is then confirmed with the grave scene) that people are going to die in this book and so you don't even question when Patrick turns out to be one of them. But then! Best reveal!
And when I went back and reread some parts of the book for writing the tag scene, I felt that Patrick's survival was also set up pretty well, starting with the very first words anyone says about him, which was the copilot telling Henry that Patrick's a tank back before Henry even meets him; he's *tough*. And Henry startles Billy while he's firing the gun ...
I just really loved how all of that was set up so that it's legitimately plausible he survives, and also that everyone is too distracted to do anything other than take it at face value that he really did die without checking a pulse even though he's right there. And the reasoning behind Henry taking the DC-4 and inadvertently saving his life when he didn't even know there was a reason to, even though it's much less convenient! It all really felt like the kind of decision-making that people make under stress, as opposed to narrative convenience.
There were so many moving parts in the finale that went together so well; it's really a masterclass in thriller writing, even if the ending feels like you've just fallen off a steep cliff with no letdown.
Re: spoilers for Flying Finish
Wikipedia tells me that Francis piloted both fighters and bombers in the war, which I had not known! I have gone and picked up another of his - our library's online service is far too easy - Second Wind, which promises more airplane hijinks, though I'm not 100% convinced by his meteorology, I thought the book must have been written further in the past but then it mentioned email and the publication date is 1999 and I don't think forecasting was quite that haphazard then, the BBC presenters were trained meteorologists but they were very far from doing it all themselves by the seat of their pants and I'm not sure about the random consulting on the side either... being held personally responsible for bad weather spoiling events is definitely spot on, though. (My husband is a weather scientist, all our rained-off picnics are his personal fault...)
Re: spoilers for Flying Finish
In terms of Second Wind, I do think that as the books get into the '90s, Francis's age starts to show somewhat, in terms of the technology. By which I mean, the intense research is still there, but I think the underlying authorial mindset hasn't really caught up, so people have a certain tendency to act as if they're in the 1970s except when they think to send an email. Understandable, but it makes for an occasional comedic and/or disconcerting effect.