No one really notices that a certain horse race might have been fixed until Matt O'Connor, a Chicago-based columnist for a national racing newspaper, gets a call from Moe Kellman, a horse-owning acquaintance. Kellman's question for Matt: Was the death of ninety-two-year-old Bernard Glockner, Chicago's oldest active bookie, suicide or murder? Glockner was Kellman's late uncle, and Kellman, a man familiar with the Chicago mob, wants Matt to check it...

In 2002, seven college friends hit the lottery, buy a race horse, and win a fortune. The leader of the friends, Arnie Rison, instigates an agreement: if one of the seven friends dies, the others assume his share down to the last survivor. In 2009, someone's offing the "significant seven" one by one, and ad man-turned-investigator Jack Doyle finds himself protecting Arnie's daughter Renee.