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.

Dick Francis has written forty novels and is rightly acclaimed as one of the greatest thriller writers in the world. Among many awards he has received is the prestigious CWA's Cartier Diamond Dagger. He was awarded the CBE in 2000. Dick Francis divides his time between England and an island in the Caribbean. Felix Francis is the younger of Dick's two sons. Over the last forty years Felix has assisted with the research on many of the Dick Francis novels, including Twice Shy, Shattered and Under Orders . With Dead Heat last year Felix was acknowledged as co-author with Dick of the latest instalments of the Dick Francis catalogue.