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. In a world of high stakes and tremendous risks, where villains will stop at nothing to achieve their ends, Dick Francis weaves his compelling narrative with the control of a master craftsman.