A Christmas Railway Mystery by Edward Marston
A mystery book review
The heroes of the long-running Railway Detective mystery series, Inspector Colbeck and his sidekick Sergeant Leeming, specialize in solving murders committed on moving trains, an intriguing premise for a detective series. In A Christmas Railway Mystery, the two Victorian detectives find themselves on stationary territory. A grisly murder has been committed in a company town of the GWR—the Great Western Railway—where men build the locomotives and railcars that carry passengers between London and points west.
“If there’s been no arrest by Christmas,” warns their gruff superior, Superintendent Tallis, they will have to stay on the job as long as necessary to find the culprit. Meanwhile Tallis goes off to enjoy a reunion with friends from his old military regiment. In temporary command he leaves a man despised by his subordinates, the self-promoting “Mouldy” Grosvenor, who can’t wait to start throwing his weight around. When Tallis is kidnapped before the reunion even begins, Grosvenor can barely conceal his delight at the possibility that Tallis might never be found and he, Grosvenor, might be promoted to superintendent.
Back in the company town, suspects with motives for doing away with the murdered employee are many, including a burly Welshman with an abrasive personality and an angelic singing voice who is eager to take the dead man’s place in the annual holiday concert, as well as a plethora of men who used to be—and might still be—enamored with the dead man’s beautiful wife. Colbeck and Leeming have their hands full, but are determined to make it home to their families by Christmas.
Although the characterization and dialogue in the Railway Detective series tends toward cliché, the railway setting is distinctive. With a new mystery appearing almost every year, including 2024’s Murder in Transit, #22, the series clearly has a devoted following. Conflicts bloom on every page of A Christmas Railway Mystery, and the peril facing the missing Superintendent Tallis is hair-raising. Fans of the series will not want to miss it. (2017, 350 pages)