Detective Inspector Henry Christie has been suspended from duty. He's spending quality time with his family, and is enjoying being reconciled with wife Kate, but at heart he's bored — and itching to get back into the fray. So when the attractive and wealthy mother of one of his daughter's horse-riding friends asks him to investigate the bizarre mutilation of some of the family's bloodstock, Christie agrees — against his better judgement. He soon finds himself running down dead ends as he discovers that John Lloyd Wickson, Charlotte's father and local multi-millionaire, has enemies in high places. As Henry starts to ask some probing questions he finds himself caught up in a web of corruption and intrigue much wider and more complex than anything he had envisaged . . .