A rough and raunchy ride exposing the dark underbelly of the glamorous Victorian racing set in a taut fact-based story from acclaimed racing writer Michael Tanner. 'ARE THEY COMING?' The last words of champion jockey Fred Archer - nicknamed The Tinman. Whose arrival was he anticipating? Whose arrival did he dread? Mourning the death of his young wife and hounded by creditors, Archer's mind begins unravelling during the 1886 season. He is propped up against the demons threatening to destroy him mentally and racing's criminal element conspiring to do so physically by his friend, racing journalist Algy Haymer. As the action veers from the social whirl of the Victorian racecourse to the squalor of the slap-bangs of the London underworld, Haymer shields Archer from a Jockeys Betting Ring and its enforcers while confronting his own insecurities and a family scandal involving Archer. But Haymer hasn't allowed for the power of 'The Policy' or the predatory wiles of an old flame whose carnal designs on him are only exceeded by her desperation for cash. The repercussions prove devastating. Haymer's guilt demands atonement - and delivers a painful blow.

Michael Tanner was born in 1933, the second of four children. He was evacuated at the age of seven but returned to Bristol before the end of the blitz. A new baby put all his mother's resilience to the test. His father, ex trooper, was invalided back to Blighty in WW1. and became an ARP Warden in the evenings.
Michael has two sons and a daughter from his first marriage and another son and stepson from his remarriage after the tragic death of his first wife. His daughter gave him a granddaughter. He ran nine London marathons and remains a keen amateur naturalist.
His Bristol B.A. was followed by National Service, mostly as a subaltern serving with the K.A.R. in Kenya. After that he trained as a teacher and taught, mainly English, for 38 years, at secondary schools, meanwhile obtaining a B.A. Hons English at Birkbeck. Most of his spare time he writes, and squeezes in study of foreign languages, and trying to play the clarinet.
He feels much gratitude to many, especially his parents and a diminutive, asthmatic Scotsman, who taught him English at Grammar School.