When a quarter-million-dollar show horse and a top trainer are found brutally murdered side by side, Natalie Gold, a reporter for the Charlotte Commercial Appeal, seizes the chance to get off the fashion beat she so detests. Though Henry Goode is the paper's star investigative reporter, it's Nattie who knows the rich, competitive, and devious world of the show horse circuit. After all, she scrimped and saved to buy her own hunter, Brenda Starr. Moving between the emerald green paddocks of the Southern gentry and the raunchy newsroom of Charlotte's bustling daily, Nattie (a Yankee from Philadelphia) has gotten a crash course in the manners and morals of old Carolina society. She's discovered the dirty little secrets of families who mingle with the super-rich but are not above partaking in dark, shameful scams. She knows that Wally Hempstead, the stiff in the stable, was not only a talented trainer, but also an A-one cheat, skilled in blackmail and extortion. And she knows at least a dozen people who wanted to see Wally very dead, including her best friend Gail. The question is - which one of them actually did it? (less)