Publisher's Weekly
Black Sgt. Winston Hope is the most competent police officer on the Caribbean island of Antigua. His brother-in-law, Ernest Wilson, is a petty hotel thief who perpetrates too fortuitous a heist and is later murdered, Mafia-style, in New York City. Suspecting a drug connection, Antiguan authorities assign Hope to unravel the crime. Hope stumbles on the truth that neither drugs nor Mafia colluded in Wilson's death: Wilson had lifted the attache case of a master terrorist whose IRA cohorts plan to assassinate Queen Elizabeth on Derby Day at Epsom Downs. The terrorists have already insinuated themselves in the paddocks among the retinue of trainers who attend Noble Lord, the Derby favorite. In his first novel, Lauder dispenses intriguing information about both steeplechase racing and terrorist practices, but the coincidences that keep the narrative moving rattle as noisily as hail on a tin roof.