Book description
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 race horse owner. A picture
of the person behind this interanational chain of crime starts to emerge
- a lover of Verdi, a man with a cool and calculating brain and an
aficionado of the racing world. Andrew Doublas, brought in to advise and
help the vicitms and their families, proceeds with all his customary
diplomacy and courage. Only to find himeself playing a dangerous part:
the role usually reserved for his clients...
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 Allen 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 89, but he
remains one of the greatest thriller writers of all time.
