Loser — Ken McCoy

‘There was a moan. Blood was bubbling from Alistair Waring's mouth. It would be the humane thing to do to finish him off. But Shooey was suddenly squeamish. For God's sake die, you stupid bastard! He went over and knelt beside the prostrate man. Surely he can't last much longer.”

So begins the new Sam Carew mystery. A lawyer is found bludgeoned to death by a golf club in his own home and when Jim Omerod is fingered as the killer his wife, an ex girlfriend of Sam's has no where else to turn. Sam believes Jim to be innocent but his investigation is delayed as he makes enemies with the local travellers by hospitalizing three of them and has to help escort a valuable painting across to Unsworth from Amsterdam.