In the original dustsheet. Black cloth binding with silver title on the spine.

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‘Sadly, death at the races is not uncommon. However, three in a single afternoon was sufficiently unusual to raise more than an eyebrow.’ It’s the third death on Cheltenham Gold Cup Day that really troubles super-sleuth Sid Halley. Former champion jockey Halley knows the perils of racing all too well – but in his day, jockeys didn’t usually reach the finishing line with three .38 rounds in the chest. But this is precisely how he finds jockey Huw Walker – who, only a few hours earlier, had won the coveted Triumph Hurdle.

Just moments before the gruesome discovery, Halley had been called upon by Lord Enstone to make discrete enquiries into why his horses appeared to be on a permanent losing streak. Are races being fixed? Are bookies taking a cut? And if so, are trainers and jockeys playing a dangerous game with stakes far higher than they realise?

Halley’s quest for answers draws him ever deeper into the darker side of the race game, in a life-or-death powerplay that will push him to his very limits – both professionally and personally. In his first new novel for six years, Dick Francis returns to prove once again that he is the Grand Master of thriller writing.

Review: I have read just about all the novels by Dick Francis – and his son Felix who is carrying on the good work his father did all those years. I decided to re-read some of his earlier works and find that though the outline story is still somewhere at the back of my mind it is good to once more get involved with the detail of the novel and the characters and enjoy once again the ingenious way Dick Francis weaves the plots of his stories. It was also good to catch up with the Sid Halley character who has ‘moved on’ in his life; in fact in this one he gets married again.

Richard Stanley Francis CBE FRSL (31 October 1920 – 14 February 2010) was a British steeplechase jockey and crime writer whose novels centre on horse racing in England.

After wartime service in the RAF, Francis became a full-time jump-jockey, winning over 350 races and becoming champion jockey of the British National Hunt. He came to further prominence in 1956 as jockey to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, riding her horse Devon Loch which fell when close to winning the Grand National. Francis retired from the turf and became a journalist and novelist.

Many of his novels deal with crime in the horse-racing world, with some of the criminals being outwardly respectable figures. The stories are narrated by the main character, often a jockey, but sometimes a trainer, an owner, a bookie, or someone in a different profession, peripherally linked to racing. This person always faces great obstacles, often including physical injury. More than forty of these novels became international best-sellers.