To the Hilt
Putnam, 1996
Characters
- 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
Favorite passages
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 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... OLLEh0 says of To the Hilt, (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:
You can't keep mountain mist in a cage.
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: Liked this one a lot, can you tell?
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.
Chosen by members of the reading group in the late 1990s. From To the Hilt by Dick Francis.
The group read it
We discussed To the Hilt on June 29, 1998 and again on November 16, 1998.
This page was first written for the reading group's original site in the late 1990s and was lost when AOL Hometown closed. It has been recovered from the Internet Archive.