SOURCE: "Mysteries," in Washington Post Book World, October 17, 1993, p. 8.

In the following review, Dowell asserts that Francis's Decider "runs smoothly and efficiently to a tidy conclusion."

When you pick up Decider, the 34th mystery novel written by Dick Francis, there's no question that you've got a well-established, best-selling author in your hands. The pages are creamy and as thick as cardboard, and the story they tell—full of proper folk, ancient manses, and "squashy" furniture—runs smoothly and efficiently to a tidy conclusion.

The narrator is Lee Morris, an architect-builder with "Le Corbusier technology and humanist tendencies." His specialty is turning ruins into elegant, comfortable habitats. He houses his increasingly estranged wife and their six sons on-site in a converted double-decker bus while he builds a dwelling. Then they move in while the new place is on the market.

The old tithe barn on the Surrey-Sussex border that...