'A small crowd of passengers stood beside the piles of luggage and a collective gasp of horror went up. As the lid of the hatbox flipped open, its contents were tipped roughly out. Reginald Hibbert could not believe his eyes. Rolling around below him on the platform was a human head. 'Derby Day at Epsom Downs. A multitude of people crowd to watch the races: dukes and dustmen, bishops and beggars, privileged ladies and prostitutes. The gamut of Victorian society and a hotbed for crime and crooks of all kinds. With the country a-flutter in the run up to this national occasion, events reach a 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.Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant are assigned to the case and are soon snarled up in a web of skulduggery stretching across the country. Soon, they are forced to ask themselves, just how much is someone prepared to hazard in order to win?