Edward Marston
A perplexing new case for the Railway Detective
On the shocking discovery of a passenger's body on the Great Western Railway excursion train, Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant, Sergeant Victor Leeming, are dispatched to the scene. Faced with what initially appears to be a motiveless murder, Colbeck is intrigued by the murder weapon – a noose. When it emerges that the victim had worked as a public executioner, Colbeck
...London 1851. With the opening of the Great Exhibition at hand, interest is mounting in the engineering triumphs of the railways, but not everyone feels like celebrating
In an audacious attack, the London to Birmingham mail train is robbed and derailed, causing many casualties. Planned with military precision, this crime proves a challenge to Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck who fights to untangle a web of murder, blackmail and destruction.
...When the engines finally met, there was a deafening clash and the Brighton Express twisted and buckled, tipping its carriages onto the other line. It was a scene of utter devastation.
October, 1854. As crowds of passengers rush to make the departure of the London to Brighton Express, a man watches from the shadows nearby
Chaos, fatalities and unbelieveable destruction are the scene soon after when the train derails just
...The Railway Detective faces his most dangerous adversary yet
1852. Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant Sergeant Victor Leeming are faced with their most complex and difficult case to date. As a train speeds over the Sankey Viaduct, a man is hurled from a carriage and plummets into the canal below. It later transpires that he has been stabbed to death. With no papers by which to identify the man, the detectives’ investigation
...December 1860. Headed for the morning shift at the Swindon Locomotive works is an army of men pouring out of terraced houses built by the GWR, a miniature town and planned community that aims to provide for its employees from cradle to grave. Unfortunately, boiler smith Frank Rodman is headed for the grave sooner than he'd expected, or he will be once his missing head is found.
Colbeck, the Railway Detective, finds his investigation into Rodman's
January 1916. Britain is on the brink of enforcing conscription. Eligible young men who have not yet signed up to fight are despised as 'conchies' and 'shirkers', subjected to hatred and verbal abuse. Cyril Ablatt, leader of Shoreditch's group of conscientious objectors, makes a rousing speech at a meeting of the No-Conscription Fellowship, refusing to be 'an instrument of slaughter in a khaki uniform'.
When Cyril is brutally bludgeoned to
...Now here's a murd'rous tale of woe, See a hero misbehave. For it shows a valiant soldier go, By railway to the grave.
Yorkshire 1855. Colonel Aubrey Tarleton is a man respected by his neighbours in the small Yorkshire village of South Otterington – as much for his heroic feats in the army as for his social position. So the community is left stunned when Tarleton, deliberately, walks into the path of a speeding train. He is crushed to death
...13) The Queen's Head
Guy Fawkes Night, 1857. Joel Heygate is the popular stationmaster at Exeter St David’s railway station an impressive figure of a man replete with frock coat and top hat, bushy eyebrows and walrus moustache. But when the charred remains of a body are discovered in the embers of the town’s annual Bonfire Night celebration, everyone is horrified when it becomes clear that they belong to Mr Heygate.
The South Devon Railway
...1857. On the LNWR train to London, a criminal is being escorted to his appointment with the hangman. But the wily Jeremy Oxley, conman, thief and murderer, has one last ace up his sleeve a beautiful and ruthless accomplice willing to do anything to save her lover, including cold-blooded murder.
When the Railway Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck learns that Oxley, his arch nemesis, has escaped, black memories of their shared past
...London, 1916. Among a new breed of fiercely independent women are the 'canaries', a raucous group of munitions workers, so-called after their chemically-stained yellow faces. However, a birthday celebration between them is interrupted by a brutal explosion. Unconvinced by the suggestion that this is the work of a German spy, Detective Inspector Marmion and Sergeant Keedy begin their investigations and attempt to untangle the many threads of a surprising
...When Robert Pomeroy, a young undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, finds a letter slipped under his door in the early hours of a rainy day, he flies into a panic. Hastily readying himself and dashing off a few lines for the porter to summon his friend Nicholas Thorpe, he hurries to the railway station. But he doesn't reach his destination alive.
Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are called upon to investigate this tragedy on the railway.
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