"The talents with which both my parents' families had been lavishly endowed had not descended to me. This had become painfully clear to them when at the age of four I had failed to distinguish between the notes of an oboe and a cor anglais."

Rob Finn, lacking his family's musical talents, became a jockey. A sudden winning streak put Finn into the forefront of steeplechase jockeys, but it collapsed with a thud, the ensuing lack of success being worse than his previous form.

Word went around that Finn had lost his nerve, but he discovered that it was part of a systematic rumour campaign to discredit jockeys, helped along in his own case by the doping of his horses. In the process of finding the source of the rumours, Finn suffered serious mauling [which is almost obligatory in Francis's novels] from the culprit.

One aspect of Nerve is parallelled in Come to Grief and Banker.

---

Nerve by Dick Francis
These links will take you to Amazon.com's web pages for the book, which may be ordered on-line.

Nerve ~ Usually ships in 2-3 days

Fawcett Books; ISBN: 0449212661; Mass Market Paperback / Published 1990

Nerve ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

Jove Pubns; ISBN: 0515123463 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.85 x 6.75 x 4.19 Mass Market Paperback / Published 1998

And 3-in-1:
Dead Cert / Nerve / For Kicks

(Out of print)