Dick Francis

Forfeit

1968. Pan Books, 1970.

The Rolls leaped across the pavement and on to the grass. The bank sloped gently and then steeply down to the Canal, with saplings and young trees growing here and there. The Rolls scrunched sideways into one trunk and ricocheted into a sapling which it mowed down like corn... I let go of Ross. It was far too late for him both to assess the situation and do anything useful about it. He was just beginning to reach for the hand brake when the Rolls crashed down over the last sapling and fell into the canal

Sports writer James Tyrone has managed to escape from his second abduction, but is nearly drowned in the process. 'You could see the silver rim of the rear window shimmering just below the surface...the water sliding shallowly through the gaping hole my rescuers had pulled me through'. Earlier he had been brought to the Zoo to be questioned inside the Big Cats' House about a missing racehorse; 'the strong feral smell seemed an appropriate background'.