Phil

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.

When English agent Gene Hawkins told his boss he'd forego his vacation to search for millionaire Dave Teller's prized missing stallion, he didn't know his retainer would include the attention of his boss's beautiful teenage daughter - or Teller's seldom sober wife. He also didn't know that a trail from London to New York to Las Vegas to California would lead eventually to murder.

Henry Grey doesn't particularly care for having been born the heir to an earldom. He is a reserved young man whose greatest problem is his mother's matchmaking plots and whose greatest joy is to ride as an amateur steeplechase jockey. But on a sudden impulse, he throws in his respectable desk job to join a firm that transports racehorses all over the world. Yardman Transport proves to be Henry's passport to many things, not the least the girl he loves, and a tidy little racket that brings him face to face with death.

Despair, suicide, and obsessive hatred, mixed well with humor, love, and horses, brew up into the story of a battle between one man's nerve and another man's cunning. Robert Finn, steeplechase jockey, finds himself the focus of a malicious campaign which is also afflicting his friends. He sets out to discover its source, and remove it.