Admiral should have won his race at Maidenhead, but an unexpected fall and the accidental death of top jockey Bill Davidson gave his friend, Alan York, the win instead.

Alan is persuaded to ride a novice hunter in another race and is surprised to find it belongs to the glamorous Kate Ellery-Penn, whose Uncle George has given her the horse as a birthday present.

Not long afterwards he recognises some of them when he is roughed up as a warning not to pursue his enquiries, but this only spurs him on to investigate what is obviously an organised attempt to interfere with horse racing on a wider scale than he had first thought.

Some of his jockey colleagues have already come under suspicion for deliberately slowing down their mounts: the popular and experienced Sandy Mason, for example, and the cocky but easily panicked youngster, Joe Nantwich.

"[4] Fred Glueckstein, in Of Men, Women and Horses (2006), wrote that "During the course of York's adventures, one can identify in Francis's work the elements that would precede his future success: a lone hero fighting villains with honor, courage, and determination; skilled plotting; action and suspense, and classic scenes of equestrian fiction.

"[5] The New York Times added some background in its obituary of Francis, A chance encounter with a literary agent led to his writing The Sport of Queens, published the year after he retired.

Drawing on his experiences as a jockey and his intimate knowledge of the racetrack crowd—from aristocratic owners to Cockney stable boys—the novel contained all the elements that readers would come to relish from a Dick Francis thriller.

There was the pounding excitement of a race, the aura of the gentry at play, the sweaty smells from the stables out back, an appreciation for the regal beauty and unique personality of a thoroughbred—and enough sadistic violence to man and beast to satisfy the bloodthirsty.