Dick Francis's Refusal

Dick Francis's Refusal is a novel by Felix Francis, published in 2013. It brings back the investigator Sid Halley, a character created by Felix Francis's father, the steeplechase jockey and crime writer Dick Francis, whose novels were mostly about horse racing in England.

Halley has been out of the business for six years, living quietly with his wife and their new daughter, when Sir Richard Stewart, the chairman of the racing authority, asks him to investigate a series of races that do not look right. Halley refuses. The following day Sir Richard is found dead, and a man with an Irish accent telephones to tell Halley to deliver a report that clears the races, or else.

He ignores the warnings at first, but the pressure is applied from more than one direction and it eventually reaches his family, which is the one thing that could have moved him. From there the book follows him as he decides to meet the people threatening him head-on rather than wait for them to act.