Horse Mystery Fiction

This wasn't the secret she expected from her Secret Santa! Security expert for a British bank by day, horse trainer at night, Izzy Paterson is a multi-tasking, dressage-riding computer whiz with an addiction to strong coffee and a penchant for CSI on Netflix. So when the Secret Santa at her office Christmas party hands her a perplexing riddle, she just can't ignore the mystery. Penned by a modern-day Robin Hood, the anonymous rhyme hints at financial misconduct that could put the future of everyone at her work in danger.

At an annual party to celebrate the success of the racing season, everything seemed to be running well to form, including the need for more champagne. Then a runaway horsebox ploughed into the marquee. A witness to the terrible death and destruction, wine merchant Tony Beach knows it is just one of those tragic accidents. But when his expert advice is called into play over sub-standard alcohol in a local night club, connections start to click, and another person dies, horribly.

Tim Ekaterin's merchant bank, like all banks, only invests in sure things. Now he's about to involve it in ₤5 million of prime horseflesh, a stallion called Sandcastle. Top breeders reckon it's the safest bet in racing. But racing doesn't just attract the money men of the city. It's riddled with all kinds of dubious dealmakers. People who don't think twice about breaking bones. People to whom no bet is safe until it's paid in blood, Ekaterin's blood.

To a jockey, losing his license is the equivalent of being struck off, or disbarred, or cashiered. When steeplechase rider Kelly Hughes lost his license his first feelings were of bewilderment and disbelief, for he was not guilty of the charges. Nor, to the best of his knowledge, was the trainer he had ridden for, who lost his livelihood as well. When his first stunned state of shock subsided, Kelly began to wonder why he had been framed, who had done it, and how it had been achieved.

John Kendall knows how to survive. He's written six handbooks on the subject. Now he wants to become a novelist, preferably without starving to death. But when cold and hunger set in, Kendall impulsively accepts an unlikely job. He is to research and write a biography of Tremayne Vickers, a famous racehorse trainer. Staying at Vickers' home in rural Berkshire, Kendall soon learns to like his host and friends, learns to ride racehorses, learns about murderers ...

Family ties mean trouble, but when jockey Kit Fielding comes to the aid of his twin sister and her husband, Bobby Allardeck, even death threatens. Putting behind him an age old feud, Kit tries to find out who is behind a vicious newspaper campaign which is jeopardising Bobby's career as a racehorse trainer. Combining his investigations with riding winners he makes some startling discoveries.

Computer whiz-kid Peter Keithly, asked to transfer a betting formula onto computer tape, dies shortly afterwards. An old friend of his, Jonathan Perry, finds himself in possession of the tapes, and also discovers that there are greedy, desperate men who will do anything to get their hands on the lucrative software. The evil, bull-faced Angelo goes too far and ends up in jail. Fourteen years later he's free, and very keen not only to get hold of the tapes, but also Jonathan Derry.

Philip Nore is nearing the end as a jockey. George Millace is finished in photography. The differnce is, Millace is dead, and Nore has discovered his secret: a set of files which would blow the top off the racing world. Hated by a dying grandmother he has never known and abused by a trainer he knows only too well, Nore is no stranger to shabby morals. And when he begins to decipher the dead man's photographs, he uncovers corruption on a scale he had never imagined.

A British jockey, riding in Norway, has disappeared, and with him has gone a day's takings from the turnstiles of Oslo racecourse. The Norwegian police have found no trace of him, nor have the British, and the case is being filed as just one more unsolved theft. David Cleveland, investigator for the Jockey Club, is a last resort. He goes without much expectation, and finds himself in waters as dark and deep as the fjords.

Derek Franklin is an injured jockey. The last fence at Cheltenham has left him on crutches. But his brother’s death means even bigger trouble. He inherits a jewellery business, a mistress – and some very shady business associates. Franklin likes to play things straight. But with £1.5 million in diamonds gone missing, he finds honesty can be a deadly virtue.

To the Jockey Club, the racing world would be a better place without Julius Apollo Filmer. An expert in corruption with a devastating line in witness intimidation, and proving to be a slippery character to put behind bars. Baffled, they call in undercover security agent Tor Kelsey to keep an unflinching eye on Filmer and his associates. A mission that takes him from the finest of English racecourses to the wild Canadian interior, on a luxury transcontinental train journey to end them all.

The Aldens are helping out at a rescue ranch, taking care of horses that need extra attention. Jessie’s favorite is a beautiful horse named Dragon. But when Dragon and some of the other horses disappear from the pasture, the Boxcar Children must saddle up for a mystery. What’s happening to the horses at the Dare to Dream Ranch?

Free choice? There's no such thing, according to Lee Morris. Choice is pre-ordained by your personality. Stratton Park racecourse faces ruin in the hands of a squabbling family. Lee is slowly sucked into the turmoil, unwillingly on the surface but half-understanding the deep compulsions that influence his decisions. One road leads to safety, another to death. How do you know which is which?

Few will hire competitive rider, Viola Parker, since the famous jumper, Wastrel, crashed to his death with her aboard. Not only that, her attitude just landed her out of work...again. She can barely afford her whipped-cream-in-a-can addiction. Now, before she's 30, she must keep a job for one year and receive a glowing letter of recommendation to get a surprise trust fund set up by her absentee parents. A trust fund that could represent freedom and independence - or might be worth nothing.

When he wakes in a pitch-black room with his hands bound, Roland Britten – accountant and champion steeplechase jockey – knows he’s entered a nightmare of someone else’s making. Wracking his brain to figure out who’s out to get him and why, he comes up empty, but somehow manages a death-defying escape. It isn’t long, though, before he’s recaptured.

Amazing what bodily injury could do for a man. A fall from a racehorse had left brilliant jockey Sid Halley dangerously depressed, with a wrecked hand and the need for a new career. And now a bullet wound was helping him find one. He'd been with a detective agency since his racing accident, but it wasn't until some two-bit hoodlum drilled a slug into his side that he was sent out on a case of his own. That was where he met Zanna Martin, a woman who just might make life worth living again.

Derby Day at Epsom Downs and a multitude of people crowd to watch the races: dukes and dustmen, bishops and beggars, privileged ladies and prostitutes. The gamut of Victorian society, though, is also a hotbed for crime and crooks of all kinds. With the country a-flutter in the run-up to this national occasion, events reach fever pitch when a disembodied head is discovered on a passenger train at Crewe; the first in a murky course of events that takes in murder, fraud and race-fixing.

Three complete stories in one collection! This volume includes The Mystery Horse, The Mystery at the Dog Show, and The Castle Mystery.

When a sick friend asks Edward Lincoln to investigate the comprehensive failure of a string of racehorses, he agrees to help out. But it is impossible for him to go about the task quietly and unnoticed because he is now a world-class star of action films, in which he always plays the hero. And the apparently easy survey of the string of racehorses blows him through a smokescreen into circumstances, where, to survive, he has to make himself become the man everyone else already thinks he is.

Randall Drew is prevented from carrying on his career in steeplechasing by poor eyesight. Restless and unsure of his future but pursuing an ardent love affair, he does not welcome an invitation to go to Moscow on a delicate investigation, but almost irresistible pressure is brought to bear. A mysterious entity, "Alyosha", is threatening a royally-connected candidate for the Moscow Olympic Games; the candidate may be vulnerable to scandal which could set off intolerable diplomatic conflicts.