When physics teacher Jonathan Derry is unwittingly given some computer tapes containing a bookie-breaking betting system, his sharp-shooting abilities come in extremely handy against the thug who comes looking for them. Fourteen years later, Jonathan's brother William is about to fall victim to the same thug. But this time, William is determined to play a cautious and crafty game. After all, once bitten ...

At an annual party to celebrate the success of the racing season, everything seemed to be running well to form, including the need for more champagne. Then a runaway horsebox ploughed into the marquee. A witness to the terrible death and destruction, wine merchant Tony Beach knows it is just one of those tragic accidents. But when his expert advice is called into play over sub-standard alcohol in a local night club, connections start to click, and another person dies, horribly.

Peter Darwin was hoping for some quiet leave from the Foreign Office. Instead he found himself in the village of his childhood, at the service of a veterinary surgeon whose operating theater was rapidly acquiring an unwanted reputation as an abattoir. The sudden unexplained death of a string of valuable racehorses from one small area in Gloucestershire was a mystery the police couldn't solve. But Darwin was local. He remembered people and what was at stake. And now he knew enough to get himself killed.

James Tyrone was the troubleshooting gracing correspondent of the Sunday Blaze, a newspaper dedicated to exposing scandals I the noisiest (and most profitable) way. Ty was accustomed to hot water, but from the day a Fleet Street colleague died after give him some serious advice, he found himself wading deep into more danger than he expected.

Henry Grey doesn't particularly care for having been born the heir to an earldom. he is a reserved young man whose greatest problem is his mother's match-making plots and whose greatest joy is to ride as an amateur steeplechase jockey. But on a sudden impulse, he throws in his respectable desk job to join a firm which transports racehorses all over the world.

Steeplechase jockey Kit Fielding has just ridden another winner for his patron – the Princess – when his distraught twin sister Holly comes to him with terrible news. A newspaper is printing stories that will put her husband, Bobby Allardeck, and his stables out of business.Putting aside the age-old Fielding-Allardeck feud, Kit decides to try to find out who is behind these cruel stories.

Derek Franklin is an injured jockey. The last fence at Cheltenham has left him on crutches. But his brother’s death means even bigger trouble. He inherits a jewellery business, a mistress – and some very shady business associates. Franklin likes to play things straight. But with £1.5 million in diamonds gone missing, he finds honesty can be a deadly virtue.

A beautiful Italian girl driving home in an open top sports car, a little boy playing on a South Coast beach and the senior steward of the Jockey Club on his way to a press reception in Baltimore. One after the other they suffer the same nightmare ordeal - kidnapping. But there is one thing connecting these particular cases. For the Italian girl is a jockey, and the little boy an only son of a racehorse owner.

The pleasure of a day at Sandown is spoiled for Steven Scott when he sacks his trainer, a one time friend whom he suspects is a crook. Racing may have its rewards, but as Scott finds out not all of them are innocent, or legal.

Once a blacksmith, now famous and respected as a newspaperman, Valentine Clark knows everyone who is anyone in the racing world. Aged, confused, blind and dying, he harbours a daunting secret that he is desperate to be rid of. He makes last confession to his visiting film-director friend, Thomas Lyon, whom in his delirium he mistakes for a priest.

Tim Ekaterin's merchant bank, like all banks, only invests in sure things. Now he's about to involve it in ₤5 million of prime horseflesh, a stallion called Sandcastle. Top breeders reckon it's the safest bet in racing. But racing doesn't just attract the money men of the city. It's riddled with all kinds of dubious dealmakers. People who don't think twice about breaking bones. People to whom no bet is safe until it's paid in blood, Ekaterin's blood.

Gene Hawkins, investigator by trade, was expert at arranging events so that they appeared accidental to all involved. Therefore, when he himself witnessed an ‘accident’ his curiosity flared up bright, and he insisted on looking into what he regarded as a work of art. A quarter of a million pounds worth of Derby-winning stallion had vanished into the Blue Grass of Kentucky... and a young man and a girl spent a dangerous afternoon in a punt on the River Thames.

Randall Drew is prevented from carrying on with his career in steeplechasing by poor eyesight. Restless and unsure of his future but pursuing an ardent love affair, he does not welcome an invitation to go to Moscow on a delicate investigation, but irresistible pressure is hard to refuse. A mysterious entity, "Alyosha", is threatening a royally-connected candidate for the Moscow Olympic Games; the candidate may be vulnerable to scandal which could set off intolerable diplomatic conflicts.

At nearly 18, easy-going Benedict Juliard has no stronger ambition than to ride in steeplechases as an amateur jockey. His father, George, driven towards a life of public service and politics, asks his son to enter into a pact that neither of them will commit any act that could destroy the father's growing reputation and career.

When a sick friend asks Edward Lincoln to investigate the comprehensive failure of a string of racehorses, he agrees to help out. But it is impossible for him to go about the task quietly and unnoticed because he is now a world-class star of action films, in which he always plays the hero. And the apparently easy survey of the string of racehorses blows him through a smokescreen into circumstances, where, to survive, he has to make himself become the man everyone else already thinks he is.