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.

Valentine, a blind, confused old man on his deathbed, seeking his peace with God, makes his last confession to a visiting friend, Thomas Lyon, mistaking him for a priest. This puts Thomas in a moral dilemma. Wild horses wouldn't drag from a priest the secrets of the confessional. Engaged in directing a film set in the world of racing, Thomas finds that the solution to this quandary could mean the difference between life and death.

Family ties mean trouble, but when jockey Kit Fielding comes to the aid of his twin sister and her husband, Bobby Allardeck, even death threatens. Putting behind him an age old feud, Kit tries to find out who is behind a vicious newspaper campaign which is jeopardising Bobby's career as a racehorse trainer. Combining his investigations with riding winners he makes some startling discoveries.

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.

Philip Nore is nearing the end as a jockey. George Millace is finished in photography. The differnce is, Millace is dead, and Nore has discovered his secret: a set of files which would blow the top off the racing world. Hated by a dying grandmother he has never known and abused by a trainer he knows only too well, Nore is no stranger to shabby morals. And when he begins to decipher the dead man's photographs, he uncovers corruption on a scale he had never imagined.

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.

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.

It's the third death that really troubles former champion jump-jockey Sid Halley. He 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 Huw Walker, the new winner of the Triumph Hurdle and Halley's friend. Now former friend. Walker was riding one of Lord Enstone's horses in the Hurdle and it was the inimitable owner who invited Halley in the first place.

To the Jockey Club, the racing world would be a better place without Julius Apollo Filmer. An expert in corruption with a devastating line in witness intimidation, and proving to be a slippery character to put behind bars. Baffled, they call in undercover security agent Tor Kelsey to keep an unflinching eye on Filmer and his associates. A mission that takes him from the finest of English racecourses to the wild Canadian interior, on a luxury transcontinental train journey to end them all.

A British jockey, riding in Norway, has disappeared, and with him has gone a day's takings from the turnstiles of Oslo racecourse. The Norwegian police have found no trace of him, nor have the British, and the case is being filed as just one more unsolved theft. David Cleveland, investigator for the Jockey Club, is a last resort. He goes without much expectation, and finds himself in waters as dark and deep as the fjords.

The house was stripped bare of all its treasures. Gone was the furniture, the family silver, the paintings and the antique china. And if that was a shock for Charles Todd, painter of horses, how much more harrowing was the trauma for his cousin Donald, whose house it was and whose young wife lay on the sitting room floor, bloody and dead... A coincidental meeting with a middle-aged widow sends Charles off to Australia, on the trail of a gang with a fruitful business in forging works of art.

Computer whiz-kid Peter Keithly, asked to transfer a betting formula onto computer tape, dies shortly afterwards. An old friend of his, Jonathan Perry, finds himself in possession of the tapes, and also discovers that there are greedy, desperate men who will do anything to get their hands on the lucrative software. The evil, bull-faced Angelo goes too far and ends up in jail. Fourteen years later he's free, and very keen not only to get hold of the tapes, but also Jonathan Derry.

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.

Randall Drew is prevented from carrying on 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 almost irresistible pressure is brought to bear. 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.

It’s the classic law of the invader. Get to the strongest guy and smash him, then watch the weaker ones fall like ninepins. Which is just what a vicious gang of horse dealers decides to do when their little kickback scam is threatened with a spot of old-fashioned honesty. But they haven’t reckoned with bloodstock agent Jonah Dereham, a man who belies his quiet exterior with a steely and implacable resolve. They can threaten him, try to burn down his home, even attempt to kill him. But they’ll soon wish they hadn’t.