| Synopsis: |
A classic mystery from Dick Francis, the champion of English storytellers. David Cleveland - an investigator for the Jockey Club - is sitting in a dinghy in a pleasant little fjord in Norway. He's here to help the Norwegians find out why Bob Sherman, a visiting English rider, has done a runner with the racehorse takings. He thinks it'll be a straightforward job, and he'll get to spend some time with old friends. But when the dinghy is hit by a speedboat and Cleveland almost drowns, he realises that there is more to this case than some missing money - especially when a dead body turns up. Now Cleveland knows the stakes are dangerously high. A sensible man would leave it to the police and go back home to England. Except, it turns out, that England isn't safe either . . . Praise for Dick Francis: 'As a jockey, Dick Francis was unbeatable when he got into his stride. The same is true of his crime writing' Daily Mirror 'Dick Francis's fiction has a secret ingredient - his inimitable knack of grabbing the reader's attention on page one and holding it tight until the very end' Sunday Telegraph 'The narrative is brisk and gripping and the background researched with care . . . the entire story is a pleasure to relish' Scotsman 'Francis writing at his best' Evening Standard 'A regular winner . . . as smooth, swift and lean as ever' Sunday Express Dick Francis was one of the most successful post-war National Hunt jockeys. The winner of over 350 races, he was champion jockey in 1953/1954 and rode for HM Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, most famously on Devon Loch in the 1956 Grand National. On his retirement from the saddle, he published his autobiography, The Sport of Queens, before going on to write forty-three bestselling novels, a volume of short stories (Field of 13), and the biography of Lester Piggott. During his lifetime Dick Francis received many awards, amongst them the prestigious Crime Writers' Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger for his outstanding contribution to the genre, and three 'best novel' Edgar Allan Poe awards from The Mystery Writers of America. In 1996 he was named by them as Grand Master for a lifetime's achievement. In 1998 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List of 2000. Dick Francis died in February 2010, at the age of eighty-nine, but he remains one of the greatest thriller writers of all time. |