Peter Darwin was hoping for some quiet leave from the Foreign Office. Instead he found himself in the village of his childhood - at the service of a veterinary surgeon whose operating theatre was rapidly acquiring an unwanted reputation as an abattoir.

The sudden unexplained death of a string of valuable racehorses from one small area in Gloucestershire was a mystery the police couldn't solve. But Darwin was local. He remembered the people and what was at stake...

And now he know enough to get himself killed...