Of course, there were many other methods of cheating that the book deals with, such as out and out bribery and threats to trainers and jockeys, and horse doping - both used by  the jockey who was likely the worst cheat of all time, an Australian named Pat Sullivan, who, in the 1950s claimed to have fixed more than 300 of his over 1,000 races. He used various methods such as sinkers- which are lead-lined aluminum horseshoes that slow a horse down, pulling a horse up so he goes slower, and many other tactics. He was banned from racing for two years.

What makes Ringers & Rascals succeed where many other books that detail crimes like this fail is that Ashforth never delves into cheap moralizing. The guys who were racing scamsters were crooks and swindlers, but they were not mass murderers. Yes, they did illegal things, but, in the grand scheme of things, their crimes pale in comparison to the hundreds of crimes committed daily in corporate America, and Ashforth realizes this. He laments the fact that computer chip injections have made horse swindling all the harder in this day and age. Then again, while lip tattooing succeeded for a few decades, it too was overcome by the swindlers, and Ashforth is not shy in hoping that they one day succeed and brings some ‘color’ back into the ‘Sport Of Kings’, for he ends his book this way:

Tattoos and brands, passports and blood testing, microchips and DNA, as well as much improved security and stewarding, have tipped the scales powerfully against ringers. Yet skullduggery’s strange appeal persists. I confess, although not as often as Barrie, that part of me hopes that today, at a racecourse somewhere….

Ringers & Rascals is not the sort of book one can nor should hold to one’s bosom for its powerful ideas nor poesy, but it is a good way to kill off an afternoon when your mind is in need of a light read. And that’s better than most books published nowadays can claim.