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Silks
When defence barrister Geoffrey Mason hears the judge's guilty verdict, he quietly hopes that a long and arduous custodial sentence will be handed down to his arrogant young client. That Julian Trent only receives eight years seems all too lenient. Little does Mason expect that he'll be seeing Trent again much sooner than he'd ever imagined. Setting aside his barrister's wig, Mason heads to Sandown to don his racing silks. An amateur jockey, his true passion is to be found in the saddle, on a thoroughbred, pounding the turf. But when a fellow rider is brutally murdered - a pitchfork driven through his chest - the prime suspect is champion jockey Steve Mitchell and the evidence is overwhelming. Mason, reluctant to heed Mitchell's pleas for legal advice, soon finds himself at the centre of a sinister web of threat and intimidation and is left fighting a battle of right and wrong, and more immediately, a battle of life and death...his own.
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Under Orders
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 power play 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.