Customer Reviews

Necropolis Railway (Jim Stringer Steam Detective 1)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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!

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.

I am neither an avid railway buff, nor a frequent mystery reader, but I thought the Necropolis Railway was terrific bit of historical fiction.

I picked this up because my four year old has somehow become a train buff, and I thought I might learn a bit more about the "steamies" beyond what the Rev. Awdry had to offer. I wasn't disappointed.

In a word, the novel is atmospheric; you get a real sense of the sooty blackness of the age of steam among these hulking engines. I also enjoyed the breathless enthusiasm that the protagonist has for the railways. It hadn't occurred to me that railway engineers were at one point the jet pilots of their day, but of course they must have been.

The mystery plot itself was a little flat: plenty of red herrings, but the villain wasn't particularly well developed, and his motivations seemed rather obscure. But like, say, Motherless Brooklyn (one of my favorites) the mystery itself is really just a frame; the interesting parts are the characters and the settings. And, of course, the trains.

I will be reading the sequel; I am sure that when Martin focuses on a more popular subject he will write a best seller.

This book has all the elements that should make it one of my favourites. A plucky boy in big grimy Edwardian London; trains; more trains; mysterious deaths etc. But I didn't get it. I couldn't even finish it. It was boring. I still say give it the benefit of the doubt. Buy this book and read it when you'rein a calm state of mind.

A reviewer here noted that this book has elements that should make it a good read, including trains. Well, I'm not a train buff, but the Edwardian setting seemed interesting, and I expected to learn about trains and railroad operations while enjoying a historical mystery novel.

Wrong. The narrative - I assume there is a story in there somewhere - is packed in strange jargon which may be understood by railway buffs, but is incomprehensible to me. And there's no help from the author, who makes no attempt whatsoever to explain these arcane terms to 21st Century readers.

So far as I could understand the goings-on, the protagonist is young, self-absorbed, ignorant, and utterly uninteresting even as he arrives in bustling London to take on a new job.

He seemed to aspire to something he called "life on the footplate" - but I was so utterly bored by this book that I never found out what that meant. I quit reading somewhere around page 50.

My copy of the book has glowing blurbs on the cover. Simon Winchester said, "Guaranteed to make the flesh creep and the skin crawl ..."

And the eyes glaze over.

Seldom have I read drivel of this magnitude. It was beyond bad; drunk lobotomy patients could have written something more believable & entertaining than this tripe. I spent 3 hours of my life reading this garbage I want to know who to write to to get those three hours back.
Let's start with the protagonist. He's a self-righteous, callow dullard who couldn't think his way out of a paper bag & we're supposed to like him because he spends his time quoting the Edwardian version of "Boy's Life" & using occasional foul epithets regarding women? For anyone who doesn't yet know, the c-word isn't funny or endearing, it's bad manners. Let's follow up with the plot. Oh, wait, there wasn't one! That's right, folks, people occasionally turn up dead for no apparent reason other than they work on the Necropolis Railway. Maybe they're unlucky or maybe it's Socialists but even by the conclusion, it's still a bit murky. Next, there's the incomprehensible railway jargon that the author NEVER BOTHERS TO DEFINE. Now, I'm an intelligent, college educated person but I spent most of the novel trying to figure out what a footplate was. I finally came to the educated guess that it was something you stand on but I have no idea what it's for; and the author never once took the time to explain it to us poor, 21st century morons. Lastly, there's the ending. I won't give anything away but I'll say this: it made no sense. Really. No sense at all. It was if the author painted himself into a corner & decided the only way out was an act of God. Don't waste your time. I've read "Archie Comics" with better character development & plots. I'm not kidding.

Okay, the title of my review gives it away. I'm a railway fan. An American railway fan, but with a pretty narrow interest in UK railways (the LMS from the 1920s through 49). That having been noted, I bought The Necropolis Railway purely on speculation, because most current railway mysteries just don't seem to click.

Well, this is another case of receiving the book from Amazon Friday afternoon and finishing it by Saturday afternoon. I loved every minute of it (even through the British slang and railway jargon which left me clueless at times). It is well written, gets "the train stuff" right, seems to be spot on for the times (or a modern view of what life must have been like in 1903), and the characters enjoyable.

Especially notable is Jim Stringer's transformation from boyish enthisiasm for the railway, to near hatred for it, and his adult appreciation of it as being more than a job, but far less than a fairy tale. I'll fess up that near the end of the novel a co-worker gives him a gift - what the gift was almost made me cheer - especially the way he embraced the spirit of the gift.

I'll also confess that I cheated. After reading this book and seeing the upcoming publication schedule, I went to amazon UK and discovered that three are already in print and a fourth is due, so I ordered the second and third titles rather than wait!

Some of the terminology may be daunting for anyone not versed in railways or Edwardian British society, but Jim Stringer is a comfortable character and I look forward to reading more of his adventures!