The Edge

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.

On board, a troupe of actors are playing out a murder mystery for the amusement of their diamond-studded passengers. Ideal cover for a secret investigator with secrets of his own.

And better still for an ice-cool blackmailer for whom murder is just one of many options . . .

Comeback

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 . . .

'The old Francis magic sweeps the reader past the post' Mail on Sunday