"BEWARE. MANY PEOPLE ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM." So proclaims the ad for the Great Transcontinental Mystery Race, a glittering rail junket that promices not only the opportunity to race a thoroughbred on some of the world's great courses but something more: an intriguing mystery to be enacted on board, which passengers will be invited to solve. But Julius Apollo Filmer, one of the most ruthless operators of the racing underworld, hatches a strange plot of his own. For Tor Kelsey, undercover security agent, a scenario of imaginary mayhem is about to explode into a nightmare of real and bloody
murder. . . .