From the author of The Necropolis Railway, The Blackpool Highflyer, and The Lost Luggage Porter comes another thrilling mystery featuring railway detective Jim Stringer. It is winter 1909, and Jim desperately needs his anticipated New Year’s promotion in order to pay for a nurse for his ailing son.
Jumping at any opportunity to impress his supervisor, Jim agrees to investigate a standard assault in a nearby town. But when his train home hits a snowdrift and a body is discovered buried in the snow, Jim finds himself tracking another dangerous killer. Soon he is on a mad chase to find the suspect, trailing him to the furnaces of Ironopolis and across the country on a dangerous ride to the Highlands. As pursuer becomes pursued, Jim begins to doubt he will ever get his promotion— or that he will survive this case at all.

From Publishers Weekly

In Martins solid fourth Edwardian-era whodunit to feature railway detective Jim Stringer (after 2008s The Lost Luggage Porter ), a blizzard forces the train on which Stringer, his wife and young son are riding home to York one cold December day to stop at a remote station. When workmen find the remains of photographer Paul Peters in a nearby storage building, a length of rope dangling from the roof beam above the body, Stringer discounts the obvious explanation that the man hanged himself. After Stringer realizes the exposures in Peterss camera are missing, he gets on the trail of a secretive upper-class society whose ranks had been dwindling until it went out of existence a year earlier. If he solves the murder, Stringer might just get promoted to sergeant. While the revelation of the crimes motive may disappoint some mystery fans, the period atmosphere and railroad lore provide ample compensation. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

The fourth in Martin’s series of historical mysteries chugs along on a formula that has become as reliable as a railroad timetable: detective meets train, detective loses a connection, detective finds a body, and, after a series of switches, detective finds the murderer. What makes this story line come alive, especially for old-time train buffs, is Martin’s obviously deep knowledge of and love for everything having to do with the steam locomotives and stations of the past. His hero, Jim Stringer, has made his way, during the last years of the nineteenth century, through the railway ranks to the position of detective with Britain’s North Eastern Railway Police. It is now 1909, and Stringer traverses an industrialized landscape as bleak and polluted as any in Dickens or Upton Sinclair. This time Stringer serves an assault warrant and then discovers a body in the snow next to a halted train. The railway atmosphere and lore are the main sources of appeal here; the mysteries themselves are often predictable. --Connie Fletcher

Review

PRAISE FOR THE JIM STRINGER MYSTERIES “No matter how deeply Jim plunges into the poverty and filth of England’s industrial age, he never loses his sense of wonder at the monstrous beauty of its great machines.”—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

“Fairly bursts with energetic prose . . . Andrew Martin succeeds brilliantly at re-creating a railwayman’s lot.” — Seattle Times

About the Author

ANDREW MARTIN was a Spectator (London) Young Writer of the Year. He lives in London. His novels featuring Jim Stringer include The Necropolis Railway, The Blackpool Highflyer, and The Lost Luggage Porter.