The Railway Detective series of books by Edward Marston

[Rivercider]

When Mrs Rivercider was shopping for books to read herself, when she came across  'A Christmas Railway Mystery' by Edward Marston,

and wondered if I might be interested. I had never heard of him, but realise this is the 15th book in the series about the Railway Detective.

 

The question is are the books any good, is there much railway related content, and it realistically portrayed?

Has anyone read any and have any thoughts?

 

cheers

[phil-b259]

When Mrs Rivercider was shopping for books to read herself, when she came across  'A Christmas Railway Mystery' by Edward Marston,

and wondered if I might be interested. I had never heard of him, but realise this is the 15th book in the series about the Railway Detective.

 

The question is are the books any good, is there much railway related content, and it realistically portrayed?

Has anyone read any and have any thoughts?

 

cheers

 

They are very good books and I would definitely recommend them.

 

You should however be aware that they are primarily detective stories of the Sherlock Holmes / Agatha Christie style. The term 'Railway detective' comes from the lead protagonists interest in the industry and that the cases are set with the railway as a backdrop rather than them all specifically being about railway matters.

 

The books feature Scotland Yard detectives Inspector Robert Colbeck and Sergeant Victor Leeming, set in the 1850s, when Scotland Yard was relatively young and the whole idea of a new specialist plain clothes detective division (as aside from the police simply patrolling the streets) was a new idea. Railways were a fairly new invention and society at the time was undergoing significant change as a result. The railway content in them seems accurate as far as I can tell.

 

As with many such detective series, although each book can be read as a stand alone item, its best to start out with the first volume as the main characters lives change over time as they experience the events in each novel.

 

So far we have had

 

1. The Railway Detective (2004)
2. The Excursion Train (2005)
3. The Railway Viaduct (2006)
4. The Iron Horse (2007)
5. Murder on the Brighton Express (2008)
6. The Silver Locomotive Mystery (2009)
7. Railway to the Grave (2010)
8. Blood on the Line (2011)
9. The Stationmaster's Farewell (2012)
10. Peril on the Royal Train (2013)
11. A Ticket to Oblivion (2014)
12. Inspector Colbeck's Casebook: Thirteen Tales from the Railway Detective (2014)
13. Timetable of Death (2015)
14. Signal for Vengeance (2016)
15. The Circus Train Conspiracy (2017)
16. A Christmas Railway Mystery (2017)

To give you a taster Book 1, the introduction to the series focuses on the following.....

 

In April 1851, shortly before the opening of the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, a mail train on the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR) is halted between Leighton Buzzard Junction and Linslade Tunnel by a group of men disguised as railway police. Using duplicated Chubb safe keys, they steal all the mailbags and a consignment of over £3,000 in sovereigns being transferred from the Royal Mint to a bank in Birmingham. The train driver, who tries to resist the robbers, is badly injured and his fireman is forced to drive the engine forward to where a section of track has been removed, causing a derailment. The robbers escape and the alarm is raised by telegraph to the Metropolitan Police Force in Scotland Yard, London, where it is received by Detective Superintendent Edward Tallis, head of the Detective Department

Edited October 6, 2018 by phil-b259

[PhilJ W]

Very good reads, helped by the author being very knowledgable about the Victorian railways or being extremely thorough in his research.

[Steamport Southport]

I think a couple of them have been adapted as radio plays as well.

 

Pretty sure I listened to one on Radio Four Extra last year. I think it was the same author anyway. I think it might have been number five about a crime on the Brighton Line "worked out" in a Sherlock Holmes manner.

 

Not really my genre, but if you like detective novels then I would give one a go.

 

 

 

Jason

[smiths park]

Read the first eleven, got them all through the library. Can I also suggest the Jim Stringer novels by Andrew Martin, set in edwardian times.

[john new]

Read and enjoyed most of the series. Not yet seen the Christmas one.

[johnarcher]

I would also mention the 'Railway Mysteries' by Victor Whitechurch, featuring a distinctly eccentric amateur railway detective called Thorpe Hazell. There's just one volume of short stories I think, but they are interesting as they were written at the time depicted (pre WW1 I think, anyway the writer died in 1933 so not much later).