For his 33rd-and quite splendid-novel, Francis (Decider) adds to his usual horse-racing setting a backdrop involving feature filmmaking. As usual, though, it's murder most foul and mayhem most brilliant for this English master. In the Suffolk city of Newmarket, Thomas Lyon is for the first time directing a film featuring an American megastar. Based on a bestselling book, the movie concerns a still unexplained, 26-year-old death by hanging of a young...

New York Times bestselling Grand Master of Crime Fiction
Foreign Office diplomat Peter Darwin uncovers a peculiar operation involving a veterinary surgeon and the unexplained deaths of several valuable racehorses.

Shell-shocked and missing a foot-lost to an IED during his tour of duty in Afghanistan-Captain Tom Forsyth has been sent "home" by the army and, at loose ends, returns to his estranged mother's house for the first time since he joined up at seventeen. But Josephine Kauri, the "first lady of British racing," has always put the horses she trains first and her family last. Tom soon finds himself strained to the breaking point with his mother and stepfather....

Hard on the heels of the triumph Under Orders comes Dead Heat, set against the backdrop of Britain’s famed 2,000 Guineas stakes.

Max Moreton is a rising culinary star, and his Newmarket restaurant, the Hay Net, has brought him great acclaim and a widening circle of admirers. But when nearly all the guests who enjoyed one of his meals at a private catered affair fall victim to severe food poisoning, his kitchen is...

Ned Talbot, a bookmaker working the Royal Ascot, finds himself in a race to solve his father's stabbing--a race where coming in second could cost him more than even money--it could cost him his life.

Flying in the eye of a hurricane, a plane carrying TV reporter Perry Stuart crashes in the Caribbean. In this manner Stuart discovers an island of uranium smugglers, a find which puts his life in danger.

It's the third death on Cheltenham Gold Cup day that really troubles supersleuth Sid Halley. Last seen in 1995's former champion jockey Halley knows all too well the perils of racing--but in his day, jockeys didn't usually reach the finish line with three .38 rounds in the chest. Yet this is precisely how he finds jockey Huw Walker, who only a few hours earlier, won the coveted Triumph Hurdle.