The Chase

Fabian Tulley is 49 and runs a small art gallery in London's Mayfair. All he wants is to keep it going quietly, but lately everything seems to be going wrong. A buyer claims that an Alfred Munnings painting he sold is a fake, and he cannot clear his name because the police are holding the canvas as evidence.

Then the trouble spreads. At a retail sale he is running at Cheltenham Racecourse, several of his other paintings are vandalized. Soon afterward, two men try to run him down in the racecourse parking lot. Clients are being warned off visiting his gallery, and his landlords are looking for a way to end his lease.

It is hard to believe this is all bad luck. Someone appears to be working methodically to destroy Fabian and his business, and he decides he will not simply accept it. As he digs into who is behind the campaign, he finds a conspiracy that he is determined to expose, whatever it costs him.

This is a horse-racing-world thriller by Felix Francis, who carries on the tradition of his father, Dick Francis. It should appeal to readers of Harlan Coben.