The Blackpool Highflyer (Jim Stringer Steam Detective.) Book

A superbly atmospheric thriller of sabotage suspicion and steam "The Blackpool Highflyer" brings a new twist to tales of Edwardian England steam railways and amateur sleuthing. When railwayman Jim Stringer is assigned to drive holiday makers to the seaside resort of Blackpool in the hot summer of 1905 he thinks he's struck lucky. But his dreams of beer and pretty women are soon destroyed - when his high-speed train meets a huge millstone on the line. Who wanted to derail the packed train? And did they want to kill everyone on board or just one passenger? Desperately seeking the saboteur Jim is drawn into the fringes of Blackpool Central Europe's busiest station. He discovers a murky world of dandies fraudsters and ventriloquists shifty revolutionaries and textile magnates. In the summer heat dazed by the sun and by the roaring fire he stokes Jim begins to understand that the more he investigates the longer his list of suspects will become...

'Genuinely gripping ...A brilliant evocation of Edwardian working-class life - the sort of thing DH Lawrence might have written had he been less verbose or been blessed with a sense of humour.' Peter Parker, Evening Standard The second Jim Stringer adventure, The Blackpool Highflyer is a suberbly atmospheric thriller of sabotage, suspicion and steam. 'Unique and important ...There is no one else who is writing like Andrew Martin today.' Ian Marchant, Guardian 'Evokes Edwardian Yorkshire and Lancashire, their great industrial prosperity and singular ways of living, quite brilliantly in a historical whodunnit which for its fresh and stealthy approach to past times deserves the adjective Bainbridgean.' Ian Jack, Guardian (Books of the Year) 'A steamy whodunnit ...This may well be the best fiction about the railways since Dickens.' Michael Williams, Independent on Sunday