This book is the sixth in the DCI Buchanan series and continues on from Buchanan 4, The Reluctant Jockey. There was great joy and excitement at Appleton equestrian farm in the village of Tudeley Brook when DCI Buchanan gave the widow Cynthia Mountjoy away to be married to Pat McCoy. Two weeks later, when Pat and Cynthia loaded champion hurdlers Rambler and Turpin into the horsebox to go to Cheltenham for Pat's inaugural race, they thought the past was all behind them. But they hadn't taken in to account the legacy left behind by her dead husband Col Victor Mountjoy.