FICTION

DECIDER by Dick Francis (Putnam: $22.95; 318 pp.) A little late out of the gate, “Decider,” Dick Francis’ 32nd (!) novel, is still worth a show bet, maybe even a place. Francis, of course, is the former jockey whose nourishing mysteries center about the racetrack. “Decider’s” slow start, then, can be chalked up to its leading man, builder Lee Morris, who doesn’t know a bangtail from an I-beam. Naturally he learns; by Page 241 he’s good and hooked on horseflesh: “No architect anywhere could have designed anything as functional, economical, superbly proportioned.” But it’s a way from there to here.

Morris stumbles into the milieu via seven inherited shares in a racecourse 90% owned by the Strattons, a “noble” British family that makes the Jukeses look like your in-laws from Anaheim. Guilty of everything from pride and prejudice to embezzlement and incest, the Strattons are precariously strung together by the Honourable Marjorie--”a delicate-looking tough-minded old lady with a touch of tycoon”--and by ownership of the track. When the stands are torched, identity of the arsonist is elusive: Pick a Stratton, any Stratton.

Meanwhile Francis is freed to do what he does best. First a swipe at animal-rights picketers who eat hamburgers and wear leather shoes: “Horses run and jump because they like to.” Next a nod to female jockeys, “rapt in (their) own private world of risk, effort, metaphysics.” Finally: Had it not been for the horse, “the seafarers, Vikings and Greeks, might still rule the world.”