Had he remained in the racing world as a trainer or thoroughbred expert after retiring from riding in 1957, Dick Francis would have been remembered as one of the most successful jockeys of his era.

Mr. Francis, who died Sunday at age 89, would also be remembered as the jockey who spectacularly managed to lose in the 1956 Grand National, Great Britain's most famous steeplechase. A photograph of him within a whisker of the finish line, aboard Queen Elizabeth's horse Devon Loch, flat on its belly with four legs helplessly splayed out, is one of racing's strangest images. To "do a Devon Loch" is a still a byword for losing a race from a seemingly unassailable position.

But the disaster actually helped launch Mr. Francis's subsequent career as a journalist and then as horse racing's most eloquent writer of thrillers. Almost all his books became international best-sellers, and they made Mr. Francis a wealthy man.

After the death in 2000 of Mary Francis, his wife of 53 years and a close collaborator on his books, Mr. Francis expressed doubts that he would ever write another novel. "She was the moving force behind my writing," he said. "I don't think I shall write again other than letters now. So much of my work was her."

Indeed, he didn't write another novel until Under Orders in 2006. That novel brought back Sid Halley, the retired steeplechase jockey who was his champion sleuth.

"Writing is damn hard, riding horses was much easier," said the rider forever labelled horse racing's unluckiest loser after the Queen Mother's Devon Loch inexplicably belly-flopped just yards from the finish line in the Grand National steeplechase.

Now he is, on reflection, grateful to Devon Loch, whose racing disaster led him to write his autobiography, work as a racing journalist and pen the thrillers that have sold more than 80 million copies. Grief-stricken after the death of his wife Mary in their Cayman Islands home in the Caribbean, Francis had no appetite to write anymore.

"My son Felix, who is my manager, was the prime mover behind me getting to write again," Francis told Reuters in an interview to mark publication. "I hope one day he might take over from me the writing of the main part of the story." He also hoped the publication of Under Orders would finally quell accusations that it was Mary and not her famous husband who really wrote the books. "I hope this new book will put it (the accusation) to rest," he said. "Mary was a terrific collaborator. I would write the stories and she would do the research." Every year he would send round a copy of his latest thriller to the Queen Mother, one of his most avid fans. This time he sent a copy to her grandson, heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles "and I received a very nice letter from him this morning."

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For Under Orders, Francis takes for the fourth time as his hero the stoical Sid Halley, champion jockey turned detective. "I wanted to have a character I knew," he explained. But is this the end of the line for the Francis thriller factory? "I don't know how many are left. I am thinking about the next one. Felix is helping with the research. But I am not going to promise. If readers don't like this one, I won't do another," he said. "I think Mary would have approved of this book. I am sure she would. I hope so. I will ask her one of these days when I join her."