Forfeit by Dick Francis

I was so accustomed to just adding another book to the list, that I forgot that I was caught up - and had promised myself that I was going to stay caught up. School is back in session, so the pace will inevitably slow down, but I did finish this a couple of days ago. At this point, although school is going none of the performance groups that I belong to are rehearsing yet, so I have a few more days.

This one I remember - even though I didn't recognize the title. The hero is a newspaperman who writes for a paper more interested in sensation than straight news. His wife is almost completely paralyzed from polio - remember, these were written in the sixties when, although polio was no longer an issue, the victims of polio were still around.

A bad has appeared from overseas with an almost perfect scheme for cheating the betting public. This is the second time that Francis has opened with a suicide. In Nerve, a jockey shoots himself in front of the crowd before a race. This time a sports columnist falls from a window convincingly enough for the coroner to believe it, but not enough for James Tyrone.

Ty takes some fairly heavy damage, but the crisis comes when the heavy threatens to turn off the breathing apparatus keeping his wife alive.

The title refers to the scheme, which has horses touted for big races to encourage betting before the actual race day - only to have the horses not show up to race.