While updating  eSequels’ list of Forthcoming Series Fiction, I started to enter the newest Dick Francis, written by Felix Frances, the deceased author’s son.  But then I remembered that, with a few exceptions, Francis did not write series fiction.  Sid Halley, his most famous character, appeared in only four of his forty novels.  Halley’s career as a world-famous steeplechase jockey was ended when an accident crippled one of his hands.  But his experience as a jockey (not to mention his devil-may-care attitude to danger) made him an ideal detective for the Radnor Agency as a specialist in their racing-investigation section.   His first case, Odds Against (Harper, 1965), offered  enough action to take Sid’s mind off his ruined career and failed marriage.  In the second book, Whip Hand (Harper, 1979), Halley is trying out his new mechanical hand.  Two further  books, Come to Grief (Putnam, 1995) and Under Orders (Putnam, 2006) feature Sid Halley, whom I always assumed was  a semi-autobiographical figure for Francis, himself a jockey whose  riding career was ended by a severe accident.

Margaret Truman is another author like Francis.  All her mysteries take place in Washington D.C., usually at a particular institution (The White House, the CIA, Watergate, etc.), but each has a different set of characters.  While her publishers have started labeling Truman’s mysteries the Capital Crimes series, they don’t really qualify for inclusion in eSequels.

–Janet Husband  7/17/2012