It's the first day of the grand Royal Ascot race, but Ned Talbot is hardly in a festive mood. This aging legal bookmaker has a lot of things on his mind: most painfully, his dwindling finances. With his earnings already depleted by big gambling conglomerates, he now faces the likelihood of another bettors' favorite winning and sucking up the loot. All Ned's woes slip to oblivion, however, when a man walks out of nowhere and identifies himself as his father, who supposedly died when Ned was an infant. In a moment, though, that changes too, as the man is knifed by an unknown assailant and can only mutter a few cryptic words before he lapses into unconsciousness. Suddenly, everything is at stake, racing quickly toward an unpredictable end.