Necropolis Railway [Paperback]

Andrew Martin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2003

A chance encounter leads young Jim Stringer, a railway porter, to move from Yorkshire to Waterloo, and a better job. But the London of 1903 is a world of garish pubs and tawdry brothels, boxed in by towering blank-faced factories. Jim finds that his duties are mysteriously confined to the strangest corner of the South Western's business: a railway line that runs to an enormous cemetery. Still more perplexingly, the men he works alongside have formed an instant loathing for him. And his predecessor has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Can Jim work out what is going on before he too is travelling on a one-way coffin ticket aboard the Necropolis Railway?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

First published in the U.K. in 2002, Martin's U.S. debut offers smooth prose, but suffers from its callow, 19-year-old protagonist, Jim Stringer. In 1903, Stringer leaves York for London to make something of himself on the railway, a consuming passion of his for years. Despite his letter of reference from a director of the London and South Western Railway, Stringer receives a hostile reception at Necropolis Railway and is soon delegated to dirty scut work connected with the transport of coffins to nearby cemeteries. When he learns his predecessor mysteriously disappeared, Stringer pursues an amateur investigation that turns dangerous after several people turn up dead. Basil Copper made better use of the creepy, atmospheric Necropolis Railway setting in his 1980 novel, Necropolis, and the almost impossibly naïve Stringer stumbles on the truth rather than displaying genuine cleverness. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Booklist

When this creepy-crawly suspense tale was originally published in the UK last year, the London Times called it "a classy potboiler . . . in the best traditions of Dickens and Collins (let alone Christie and Chandler)." There may be just a touch of hyperbole there, but the novel is certainly worthy of praise. The atmosphere is first-rate: Martin does a stunning job of bringing to life the era when steam locomotives chugged from London through the British countryside. And he intensifies by giving his hero, Jim Stringer, a job on one of those trains--not just any train but the one that carries bodies from London to burial on the city's outskirts. A refugee from the poverty of Yorkshire, Jim had been reduced to cleaning women's lavatories in railway stations before getting his big break and landing on the Necropolis Railway, where he endures hostile coworkers and working conditions only slightly better than those in the toilets. Even worse is his growing suspicion that a former worker may have met with foul play. The lurid tone and Jim's growing uneasiness lead to a supremely scary climax. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber (July 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571209912
• ISBN-13: 978-0571209910
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,499,442 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars For Fans of the Railway, This is a Must, June 4, 2008

By 

Graceann Macleod "Books Fuel My Life" (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Necropolis Railway (Jim Stringer Steam Detective 1) (Paperback)

I think I would have gotten much more out of this novel if I had understood how steam railways work. I simply didn't understand the terminology and thus I think I missed quite a lot in the telling.

The murder mystery was a good one, and I didn't see the answer coming until the protagonist did, which is always a good thing. I hate "mysteries" where I can see the answer 100 pages in advance. That didn't happen here. However, Stringer isn't a superior sleuth; he just has fortunate accidents.

I didn't understand the need for the female character in this story, either. It seemed she was just placed there because "that's what you do." She was one-dimensional and quite bland. The other characters are a bit more compelling and I would have liked to have heard more from them. Martin's descriptions of Edwardian London are spot on, and since I am very familiar with the Waterloo/Lower Marsh area that he describes, it was great fun to spot the locations that still exist today.

All in all, I'm glad I read Necropolis Railway, but I don't think I got as much out of it as a railroad buff would. I picked it up because the idea of a train that runs only to a cemetery sounded creepy in a fun way, and I was interested in that concept. I think I'll pick up other books that talk about Necropolis and Brookwood Cemetery, and I'll probably get a better understanding from those.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars For railroad buffs only, June 4, 2007

By 

D. Martz (Vienna, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Necropolis Railway: A Jim Stringer Mystery (Jim Stringer Mysteries) (Paperback)

I love authenticity in historical fiction and respect the research that authors do in order to achieve an atmosphere rich in accurate detail. Here, though, Martin's hard work actually gets in the way. This book is so chock full of ca. 1903 railroad terminology and minute details of who did what in an engine yards that it slows down character development and forward movement of the plot. I gave it 60 pages and bailed out. In today's popular fiction market, the author will be lucky if many readers wait that long. If you're a train buff, on the other hand, run (don't walk) and grab a copy of this book!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Splendid departure, May 19, 2009

By 

tertius3 (MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Necropolis Railway: A Jim Stringer Mystery (Jim Stringer Mysteries) (Paperback)

This is a joint review of the initial books in two mystery series set on English railways during Queen Victoria's reign, Andrew Martin's The Necropolis Railway, and Edward Marston's The Railway Detective .

Martin begins at that bottom with young Jim Stringer, whose dream is to live on the footplate, driving a great iron locomotive in the Gilded Age. Now he is just an engine cleaner, trying to make the leap to fireman. He is subject to severe hazing by his colleagues in the locomotive shed in London, absent any training programme. As gradually emerges, in tandem with his growing skills, this country-boy was hired under suspicious circumstances by a director of a special funereal railway. The mystery is what nefarious things are going on behind the scenes. The excitement is in the arduous training and enlightenment of Jim. The suspense is whether the observant young man will survive the attention of his malignant supervisors and prove worthy.

Marston jumps into the early days of the railways. Robert Colbeck, a dapper detective--nattily-dressed and proud of it--is from the new Metropolitan Police of Scotland Yard. He takes on the mystery of who had robbed and crashed a mail train full of gold and sensitive mail. Was it done for money or out of hatred of the new-fangled railways? Dastardly deeds continue to affect the railway and its locomotives, and endanger Colbeck's budding infatuation with a poor but beautiful girl, the tearful daughter of an assaulted train driver.

Martin immerses you in the smoke, sweat, and argot of the 1903 era of mechanical monsters; Marston's could be set almost anywhere in the generic Victorian era. Martin imbues his story with Jim's sense of awe before the steam power and mechanical clackery of the time. With Martin at your side you feel Stringer's enthusiasm and are immersed in his confusing and steep learning curve, including the jargon; Marston is the omniscient author, meant to awe, featuring an arrogantly correct detective who is always prescient, out-sherlocking Sherlock. Marston merely uses the railway as a setting, while Martin is engaged in reconstructing the whole experience for us, creating an historical novel in the best sense. While Martin's characters are young, they are complex and mature; Marston's heroes are older men with simple sentiments and antagonisms. Martin's unassuming Jim struggles to survive and inadvertently develops a talent for observation and detection; Marston's Det. Colbeck emerges full-blown and already famous, always with the critical data in hand.

Martin slowly constructs the unsuspected crime, which becomes part of the solution to many inexplicable activities and hostilities experienced by Jim along the twisting way; Marston starts his story with a train crash and his plot moves inexorably towards a solution, flagrantly linear, lacking misdirection, and undercutting the possibility for suspense. It is just too pat. His man Colbeck is obstructed only by a recalcitrant supervisor or a reluctant sergeant--perhaps inserted for attempts at limp humor. Martin writes with empathy and insight into complex people in difficult situations; Marston cannot write sympathetic characters, effective humor, or affecting romance: his Det. Colbeck especially is a cold fish for whom I cared not a whit. Unlike Martin, Marston does not "put us in" his early locomotives, just lamely gives their makers' names--meaningless to me. You can say, hey, I don't care about graphic technology--but you need something to make Marston's listless story interesting, don't you?

In sum, Martin is a much better writer. However, we can never again witness a naive Jim Stringer mature into a wiser, wary man before our eyes, that makes his first story special. I am not a train buff, but this had the promise for me I met in my first Patrick O'Brien nautical tale. I like the challenge of figuring out what the heck is going on. Haven't you ever been in a foreign situation, grasping for any clue as to the meaning of the simplest matter around you? That quest quite overcame any question of Jim's naïveté. I think Martin is brilliant to start Jim out knowing little, and developing him. I intend to continue.