August 1962. A suspicious fire claims a tumbledown barn on the grounds of the once-proud Sanford Shaw Stud Farm, halfway between New Holland and Saratoga Springs, NY. The blaze, one of several in recent years at the abandoned farm, barely prompts a shrug from the local police.
No one at the New Holland Republic wants the assignment, so it falls to girl reporter Ellie Stone to file a story on the fire. She uncovers a singed length of racing silk in the rubble in the barn. And it’s wrapped around the neck of one of two charred bodies buried in the ashes.
What business did Johnny Dornan, a jockey in the midst of a successful August meet at Saratoga, have dying alongside a hand-me-down Jezebel like Vivian McLaglen–a woman with a long list of disreputable lovers and an even longer rap sheet? The police suspect gamblers and race-fixing. Ellie digs deeper.
The double murder, committed on a ghostly stud farm in the dead of night, leads Ellie down a haunted path, just a stone’s throw from the glamour of Saratoga Springs, to a place where dangerous men don’t like to lose. Unraveling secrets from the past–crushing failure and heartless betrayal–she’s learning that arson can be cold revenge.