“Silks” 
by Dick and Felix Francis

Review #168

Soon after London barrister Geoffrey Mason, an amateur jockey by avocation, starts receiving a series of threatening messages from a former client, Julian Trent (whose conviction for assault was overturned on appeal), Mason reluctantly accepts the defense of a jockey, Steve Mitchell, accused of the pitch-fork murder of fellow rider Scot Barlow at a steeplechase event.

Mitchell and Barlow had fallen out over Barlow's sister, a vet and Mitchell's former girlfriend, who took her own life just a short while before. When unknown parties order Mason to lose the case, he must balance his professional ethics and his sense of self-preservation. 

Mason works to discover the connection between Trent and the murder, even though doing so will endanger himself and his loved ones.

Another Francis winner!