Comeback

Peter Darwin's return home to Cheltenham to help a veterinary doctor is ruined when he's greeted by an unsavory string of deaths, both human and equine. As the bodies and the horses pile up, Darwin comes to the grim realization that the answers to the murders may lie in his own past.

His 30th novel, an 11-week PW bestseller in cloth, displays Francis's trademarks: seamless plotting, believable characters, suspense and a bang-on horse-racing setting, in this case featuring a veterinary surgeon plagued by a series of mysterious equine deaths.