Murder is a fact of life – and of death.
It always has been, and no doubt, it always will be.
But, thankfully, the probability of being murdered is small. According to the UK Office for National Statistics there were 637 murders or intentional manslaughters in the Great Britain during the twelve-month period to March 2024, from a population in excess of 67 million. Compare that to the 1,633 people killed in traffic accidents on British roads during the same period. So, statistically, you are more than two and a half times more likely to die in a car crash than be bumped off by a murderous villain.
But those bold numbers don’t paint the full picture. Of those 637 individuals, 458 were male and 169 female, and the vast majority of both sexes were killed by someone they knew.
We are all warned as children not to take sweets from strangers, but in the year to March 2024, only 2 out of 45 killings of those under sixteen were known to be perpetrated by a stranger, whereas more than three-quarters of those charged with child murder were either a parent or step-parent of the victim.
Murder by a stranger is more common for older male victims, at 20%, while stranger-murder of females remains low for any age, at 5%. Indeed 80% of all murders of females take place in their own or a family member’s home, and three-quarters of those are carried out by a current or former sexual partner. On average in the UK, three women are killed each week by someone who has been in an intimate loving relationship with them. In the United States, that figure climbs to 30 every week, mostly due to gunshot wounds.
A large proportion of these women have suffered many years of coercive and controlling behaviour by their partners prior to their deaths. And trying to end the relationship is often the trigger for violence.
In my latest novel, DARK HORSE, I explore a controlling relationship between Imogen Duffy, an up-and-coming young Irish female jockey, and her boyfriend, Liam Carson, another jockey. Liam becomes hugely jealous of Imogen’s increasing success. Fed up with him always putting her down, Imogen attempts to finish their romance, which provokes Liam to violence, claiming that he’d rather kill her than let her leave him.
Imogen flees from Ireland to England, but Liam follows her, securing a job just a few miles away from her own. Liam then sets out to destroy both Imogen’s burgeoning racing career and her personal reputation, to say nothing of his continued threats to kill her.
Imogen’s life begins to spiral out of control, and so her father approaches Sid Halley as a last resort to sort out what is rally going on, but Sid finds that his own life is then being threatened by an unknown assailant.
Can he solve the mystery before someone gets killed – maybe even him?
Read DARK HORSE to find out.
‘Dark Horse’ by Felix Francis is published by Zaffre Books at £20 on 25 September. Felix will be doing a book tour in October.
© Felix Francis, 2025
