Although Sid Halley and Kit Fielding are the only Francis detective-heroes who appear in more than one novel, each of his narrator-heroes is an admirable man with whom the reader quickly feels comfortable. For this reason, as well as the recurring presence of horse racing elements and various plot devices previously discussed, all Francis novels have obvious links to each other. One that has a special relationship to To the Hilt is In the Frame (1976), whose narrator-hero, Charles Todd, is an artist, a painter of equestrian subjects, whose first words are "I stood on the outside of disaster, looking in."

Like Kinloch, Todd reluctantly becomes caught up in a life-threatening situation for which neither temperament nor train ing has prepared him.