Dick Francis open letter from Linda Corby

To Dick Francis via his Solicitors Taylor Joynson Garrett at: http://www.taylorwessing.com/website/generator/taylorwessing/pages/contact/contactPage,CmPart=com.taylorwessing.website,CmLocale=en,CmPage=72.4030.html
C. C. To other interested parties.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Without Prejudice:
Dear Dick Francis,
I have just posted this open correspondence for you on the internet; it is disgraceful that you have not apologized to me for your actions. I have tried my best to come up with a reason as to why you did this to me as I actually didn’t want to think badly of you.
You cannot do what you did to us and expect to get away with it without as much as a simple apology. The facts speak for themselves and I have the proof to back them up, if I hadn’t do you really think I would have plastered the details of what you did on the internet for all to see or anything else I have done? Of course I wouldn’t, there would have been no reason to!
The fact is that ‘Come to grief’ is based on my life and that of my family; you know it as I do.
Don’t you think it is time you came clean about it? Even if it was down to your late wife you are still responsible and sooner or later everyone will know the truth, a lot already do.
If you believe that ignoring the situation will make it vanish you couldn’t be more wrong. I will not have my daughter Natasha’s life and our memories (facts of our lives) be thought of as fiction by anyone.
People are not stupid; they know that you cannot manipulate/copy a fiction novel into a factual true life autobiography, whereas everyone knows you can make part of a true life autobiography into a fiction novel. So if you think for an instant that people won’t buy my autobiography and put two and two together you are living in’ cloud cuckoo land’ they already are. If you are wondering if I have named you in the book for what you have done, the answer is yes I have, and I have every right to tell the truth, the truth cannot be considered defamation and is not libelous.
Well it is up to you what you now do
Justice happens when your wants and needs come into balance.
I am a person with moral sensitivity a strong sense of compassion/fairness. I feel empathy for other human beings, who always try to be fair-minded treatment of other beings.
Because of the above mentioned I find myself looking for reasons as to why Dick Francis used part of my life and that of my family as the basis for his novel ‘Come to Grief’, at the end of the day it is Dick Francis’s name as author of this novel, consequently as such it is legally his responsibility that my copyright has been infringed upon within its pages.
Having said the above I have a but, my but is the fact that it is openly reported in the tabloids that it may well have been his late wife Mary Francis that might have been responsible for the contents in ‘Come to Grief’ , for she was his researcher and draft copy editor for his books at the time.
Now I know my but is not an excuse for what Dick Francis did, and the fact is that his correspondence to me was signed by him and not his late wife. However, how many times do people sign correspondence without even looking at it when they get thousands of people corresponding with them, when others they trust sort these things out for them; they have been known to sign without even looking at what they sign?
All I asked Dick Francis for when I found out what he (As the acknowledged author of ‘Come to grief’) had done was a simple apology, nothing more nothing less. I did not and do not feel this was unreasonable under the circumstances. I hadn’t even considered the fact that I could sue for copyright infringement or anything along those lines, I was still in terrible pain/grief from losing my daughter Natasha, and to find a huge part of her life/our lives fictionalized in ‘Come to grief’ was so horrendously painful and such a shock to me that I am still traumatize from it to this day!
There was/is no disclaimer in the book I purchased of ‘Come to Grief’ by Dick Francis as to it not being based on any person living or dead.
Our characters nor the real events that occurred in our lives are fictional creations, the word coincidental equals accidental or by chance not the 150 supposed coincidences that are used in the first 50 pages of ‘Come to Grief’ that directly relate to our characters and events that occurred in reality in our lives. The basis of the story-line in ‘Come to Grief’ blatantly fictionalize the facts of what we actually went through, and are so thinly veiled that it is utterly preposterous.
I have the proof for everything I say. Birth/death certificates, Police records, newspaper articles, TV. appearances, whatever, all pre the publication of ‘Come to grief’. Dick Francis or his late wife? Even used my first name as the mother of a child with cancer the fact is my daughter did have cancer, this mother Linda (me) also had another baby at the same time, fact I did, and it just goes on and on to the point of being completely outrageous!