The Excursion Train (The Railway Detective Series) - Hardcover

Marston, Edward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0749083921 ISBN 13: 9780749083922

Publisher: Allison and Busby, 2005

Synopsis

Set in 19th century England, a bustling crowd boards the Great Western Railway Excursion train on their way to an illegal championship fight in Maidenhead. As the rowdiness of the crowd increases, the train’s guard fears "for the safety of his rolling stock". The last thing he expects to find is the brutal murder of one of his passengers, Jake Bransby. Once the shocking discovery of the body is made, Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant Inspector Leeming, are called to the scene. Faced with what initially appears to be a motiveless murder Colbeck is perplexed by the murder weapon, a noose -- until he later discovers Bransby previously worked as a public executioner. However, the more he delves into the case the more mysterious it seems to become. After a second death by noose takes place Colbeck knows he must act quickly. Can he catch the murderer before more lives are lost? Rich in historical detail The Excursion Train will hold you captivated from beginning to end.

About this title

Review:

Murder in the midst of merriment can be the most shocking sort, and so it is in the case of Jacob Bransby--brutally strangled with a length of wire while on board a train carriage crowded with lowlife Londoners, all bound for an illegal bare-knuckle prizefight in Berkshire in 1852. That the deceased's wallet was not purloined leaves Scotland Yard Inspector Robert Colbeck wondering at the motive for this heinous act--and, soon, additional crimes--in The Excursion Train, Edward Marston's second witty, railroad-tied Colbeck escapade (after The Railway Detective).

It doesn't take the foppish flatfoot long, though, to realize that "Bransby" was an alias, behind which hid a veteran public executioner, notorious both for his religious mania and his appalling incompetence with a hangman's noose. While the deceased's suffering spouse lives in denial of her husband's invidious deeds and macabre mementos, and their estranged son operates under his wife's maiden name in order to avoid being treated "as if I was a leper," Colbeck--assisted, as usual, by tenacious Sergeant Victor Leeming--does everything he can to expose the dead man's secrets, and thus flush out a killer. Could this homicide have been committed in retribution for the botched hanging in Kent, a month before, of butcher Nathan Hawkshaw, a generally upstanding individual convicted (despite his protestations of innocence) of hacking to death the alleged rapist of his 16-year-old stepdaughter, Emily? The inspector can only determine that, it seems, by first revisiting the Hawkshaw case--an endeavor that will lead to Leeming's inauspicious beating, an attempted suicide, Colbeck's employment of Madeleine Andrews (the comely conductor's daughter he rescued in The Railway Detective) as his investigative confederate, and yet another slaying on the tracks.

Brimming with whimsical dialogue, full-throttle turns, and a droll cast (especially delightful is priggish police superintendent Edward Tallis), The Excursion Train might only be faulted for the artlessness of its romantic subplot. British novelist Marston, best known for his Elizabethan theater mysteries (The Counterfeit Crank), has struck a rich, arcane vein of possibilities by rooting the Colbeck books in the world of railroads--the transformational technology of mid-19th-century England. Colbeck and Leeming have the opportunity in future installments to steam off after malefactors in any queer corner of Victorian Britain. All aboard! --J. Kingston Pierce

About the Author:

Edward Marston has written over 100 books, including some nonfiction. He is best known for his hugely successful Railway Detective series, the latest of which is The Circus Train Conspiracy. His other current series are the Home Front Detective , set in the Great War, and the Bow Street Rivals featuring identical twin detectives during the Regency.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allison and Busby
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0749083921
• ISBN 13: 9780749083922
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288