Alistair MacLean · 1973 · road

Alistair MacLean's 1973 thriller. The reigning Formula One world champion crashes at the French Grand Prix, killing his closest rival and crippling his girlfriend, and appears to fall apart into drink and disgrace. Too many things have been going wrong on the circuit for a whole season, and Johnny Harlow's collapse is not what anyone watching it thinks.

1. 1
   Clermont-Ferrand

   At the French Grand Prix a collision kills the driver Isaac Jethou and leaves Mary MacAlpine crippled - one more in a season of crashes that already cost Harlow his brother, and the one that finishes him.

2. 2
   Monza

   The circus moves on through the European circuits, and Harlow drinks in public and does something else entirely in private - breaking into transporters, photographing documents and letting the whole paddock believe he is finished.

3. 3
   Marseille

   What he has found has nothing to do with motor racing: the teams' transporters have been running heroin across Europe for a season, and the reckoning is settled off the circuit altogether, in the docks and warehouses of the south.