Mortiz with protagonist Miles drawn back into the equestrian world he had walked away from years earlier. Miles doesn't always make the best choices, but given his life circumstances, he's doing the best he can.

The style of the books has changed (for the better, I think) since they were under the sole authorship of Dick Francis and it is eleven years since Francis senior died. Things look bright in his career when finally his feelings of loneliness, depression, inconsistent riding ability, and growing self-loathing along with nightmares and anxiety attacks catch up with him, complicated by consuming alcohol to cope and the bodily stress of trying to maintain riding weight.While all this ten-years-ago history is being recounted, the story is interleafed with Miles current activity on the Swiss Cresta Run, an ice chute for toboggan racing.

He feels that he could have saved his mother if he had been paying better attention but conflicts about his future plans had them estranged at the time of her death. On the other hand, this was balanced by my pleasure in learning more about the sport of toboggan racing, and also about horse racing on the ice, which, prior to this, I had no idea existed. It contains a number of flashbacks that talk about his past and the things that made him the man he is now.Miles had gone to live with his grandparents, as they had been allowed to leave school at fifteen they hadn’t seen the point in forcing Miles to concentrate on his education. That's Ok, but I still liked the "typical" Dick Francis guy----strong, stubborn, capable, trustworthy, comforting, kind, loyal, quiet-----it was funny, but at the END of this novel, Miles finally almost turns into that guy! Martin Jarvis was the narrator for the audiobook version of this novel, and he was all wrong for the role.