When healer Jude pays a visit to Long Bamber Stables one evening - to meet her unusually equine new client and his owner Sonia Dalrymple - she does not expect to stumble across a man laying in the darkness. Co-owner of the stables, Walter Fleet, has been viciously stabbed to death.

Walter leaves behind a cynical wife who shows no desire to mourn his departing. Meanwhile, a horse hand appears to be more of a danger than a help and Sonia Dalrymple seems to be concealing a deeply troubling secret. Unable to resist a mystery, sleuthing friends Jude and Carole begin to make discreet enquiries.

It soon becomes clear that Long Bamber Stables is a hotbed of dangerous passions, murderous rivalries and hidden truths . . . and this horsing community will do anything to protect their reputations.

`Murder most enjoyable . . . An author who never takes himself that seriously, and for whom any fictional murder can frequently form part of the entertainment industry' COLIN DEXTER, The Oldie

`One of the exceptional detective story writers around' Telegraph