Date first published	Sept. 1993
ISBN Number	0 7181 3602 0
Page Count	277 h/b
h/b= hardback : p/b= paperback

Storyline

Free choice? There's no such thing, according to Lee Morris, architect, engineer, jobbing builder and entrepreneur. Choice is pre-ordained by your personality, he says.

Stratton Park racecourse, privately owned, faces ruin in the hands of a squabbling family. Lee, loosely connected but not related, is slowly sucked into the turmoil, unwillingly on the surface but half understanding the deep compulsions that influence his decisions. One road leads to safety, another to death. How do you know when you must choose.? How do you know which is which?

Lee's choices and their consequences bring deadly results, but te road out of the quicksand is there, if he can find it.

Horses and racing are familiar Dick Francis ingredients, but this time there are also children, houses, roots and decisions. Danger? Naturally.

Stratton Park racecourse is worth multi-millions, and all the splinter groups of the Stratton family are playing to win.

Review

This is a stunning book from an author that always delivers. The outsider, coming into the fold and finding salvation, is not a new theme to the author, but it is the way that he does it in this story that makes the difference. Much like To The Hilt the story is very much about family division, and about power. it is quite clear that the family have used their wealth and power to protect the family name.

Lee is the outsider, who is only connected, by a family tie - his mother married to Keith Stratton, but left when he beat her and worse.

The family has been tied together, by Lord Stratton, but on his death, the forces of the family are unleashed, those that want to keep the race course and those who want to sell for development. The story literally unfolds over a short period of just under two weeks. A time in which our hero wins the respect of most of the family, apart from the main protagonist, we have, explosives, fire, and bogus demonstrators, although I'm sure that not all animal rights activists are vegetarians.

Unusually we don't learn a lot about the hero's business or how he does what he does, we are just left to fill in the blanks. What we do get is the story of a family man, who will do anything to protect his children, and who on a couple of occasions actually save his life. As with most Francis books the hero pulls in some help, as he unravels the murky past of his family.

In fact it is a testament to the authors skills that we don't get lost in the number of characters, as their are 14 main characters, and they all get a decent outing at some point in the book.

An excellent book, it is clear from the outset who the real bad guy is, and it is just a matter of seeing how he is thwarted by the end, and he does get a suitable comeuppance.

Read and enjoy and author clearly at the height of his writing.

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