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To the Hilt

by Dick Francis

Putnam, 1996

Alexander Kinloch's mother understands that he wants to live alone on a mountain in Scotland painting his pictures and playing the bagpipe. She says that "Solitary people are never alone," and "You can't keep mountain mist in a cage." But then several thugs beat Alexander up asking, "Where is it? Where is it?" and the finance director at his stepfather's brewery disappears with all the money...

• Alexander Kinloch - 29, painter
• Donald Cameron - runs the post office where Al gets his mail
• Ivan George Westering - Al's stepfather, "baronet, brewer, pillar of the British Jockey Club"
• Earl of Kinloch ("Himself") - Al's uncle
• Jed Parlane - 46, manages the Kinloch Scottish estates
• Flora - Jed's wife
• Wilfred - Ivan's nurse
• Patsy Benchmark - 34, Ivan's daughter
• Oliver Granchester - Ivan's lawyer
• Edna - cooks for Ivan and Al's mom
• Lois - cleans for Ivan and Al's mom
• Vivienne - Al's mom
• Dr. Keith Robbiston - Ivan's doctor
• Tobias Tollright - partner in a firm of accountants who audit the King Alfred Brewery accounts
• Emily Jane Cox - Al's wife, racehorse trainer
• Margaret Morden - insolvency practitioner
• Desmond Finch - Second in command at Ivan's brewery
• Norman Quorn - finance director at Ivan's brewery, took all the money and disappeared
• Surtees Benchmark - Patsy's husband
• James - eldest son and heir of the Earl
• Dr. Zoe Lang - 80, retired lecturer in English from St. Andrews University
• Andrew - 11, James' oldest son
• Detective Sergeant Berrick - Deputy director of the security service of the Jockey Club
• Detective Constable Thompson
• Detective Chief Inspector Reynolds
• Xenia - 9, Surtees & Patsy's daughter

OLLEh0 says of To the Hilt, "This book had me laughing out loud! What was it about this story? Definitely not the grilling scene but some parts were funny.
Quotes and musings:

• "Some are born weird, some achieve it, others have weirdness thrust upon them." 3, HC
• The artist and his use of color, page 15, "..where I sat on a brown-painted bench against a margarine wall."
• pg. 95: ""Young and Utterly Outrageous, more like.' 'You're so sharp you'll cut yourself.'"
• Pg 166: "I refrained--just--from observing that the mortuary was on everyone's way home..."
• pg. 192, the woman waiting for the end telephone when there were 6 empty ones in the row. Such a snapshot of that woman's personality.
• pg. 221 "...kissed his forehead and said on the way home how icy cold he was; nothing like life; and I didn't tell her that it wasn't the chill of death but of efficient refrigeration.
• pg 258 Patsy wants Alexander to meet her at her house because Himself has straightened her out, and Alex goes with Chris. I found this jump difficult to believe--that he would be "truly undecided" about her motives. If DF had Al say he needed to go to see what she was up to--that would be one thing. But to actually think Patsy might be unbending, that didn't come across as true at all. Not in character. Of course, Chris came through with the bus, Grantchester ended up a changed man , etc. etc.

(That's all from OLLEh0. The next one is mine.)

This book had so little racing stuff in it! Yet Al did paint at least one picture of a jockey: "As always when I saw my own work freshly after an interval, I felt a mixture of excitement and shock. The picture was of a jockey plodding back to the stands after a fall, disappointment in his shoulders, a tear in his grass-stained breeches. I remembered the intensity of feeling in the brushstrokes, the stoicism and the loneliness of that man's defeat."

Other book titles in the text: Risk.

We discussed To the Hilt on June 29, 1998 and again on November 16, 1998. Members can find the meeting logs in our reading group folder on AOL or at our Internet Members area.

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