Dick Francis: Proof (UK 2014)

From the Publisher:
A classic mystery from Dick Francis, the champion of English storytellers.
Wine merchant Tony Beach will do anything for a quiet life. But when a party to celebrate the end of the racing season ends in eight violent deaths, he is drawn reluctantly into the subsequent investigation.

Meanwhile, the police, having evidence of the sale of illicit alcohol at a local club, ask for Tony's help in closing it down. Thanks to his intervention, Tony comes to the attention of the criminal underworld. And that's when he reluctantly realizes that the deaths and the illicit alcohol are connected. Tony doesn't want to be a hero. But if the choice is that or dying...

Dick Francis: Proof. Penguin, ISBN: 9781405916639 (September, 2014), 304 p., £7.99.

Dick Francis: Proof (USA 2005)

From the Publisher:
Wine merchant Tony Beach has expertly catered his latest society soiree, but the fun's over when a team of hit men crash the party... literally. The event leaves Tony with a bitter aftertaste of suspicion -- and sets off a mystery that's an intoxicating blend of deception, intrigue, and murder.

Dick Francis: Proof. Berkley Books, ISBN: 9780425203934 (July, 2005), 368 p., $8.99.

Dick Francis: Proof (UK 2000)

From the Publisher:
First published in 1984, Proof was Dick Francis's twenty-third bestselling racing thriller. Set in the world of wine and spirits, it is crafted with his usual high standard of drama, suspense and invention.

If you mix a liquid with gunpowder and ignite it, and it burns with a steady blue flame, then the liquid must be at least fifty per cent alcohol: and that's PROOF... That's the way they proved a liquid was alcohol in the seventeeth century when distilled spirits were first taxed, and that's what is meant by proof to this day.

Tony Beach, wine merchant, knows his scotch, so to be asked to give his opinion of one particular bottle seems harmless enough. But the bottle contains firewater of a highly explosive nature - and, without intending it, Tony finds himself trapped on a one-way route into danger.

From a harmless Sunday morning party at a racing stable and onwards to the edge of death, Tony comes nearer and nearer to a lethal adversary and, unexpectedly, to a fuller knowledge of his own true self.

Dick Francis: Proof. Michael Joseph, ISBN: 9780718132378 (July, 2000), 268 p., £17.99.

Dick Francis: Proof (USA 1997)

From the Publisher:
Young wine merchant Tony Beach's exposure of a liquor scam sparks a brutal murder and forces an investigation into corruption in the liquor industry to spread into the rarified world of thoroughbred horse racing.

Dick Francis: Proof. Jove, ISBN: 0515121207 (July, 2005), 356 p., $6.99.

Dick Francis: Proof (USA 1986)

From the Publisher:
When a typically perfect party at wine merchant Tony Beach's is brutally crashed, he finds himself caught in the terrifying midst of a mystery that begins with sham scotch and counterfeit claret and escalates to hijacking and murder...

Dick Francis: Proof. Fawcett, ISBN: 0449207544 (February, 1986), 342 p., $4.95.