Customer Reviews

Railway Detective (A & B Crime)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If Edward Marston stays true to his writing history, his legions of fans can welcome a new series! In "The Railway Detective," Marston introduces us to Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck of the new Scotland Yard. A charming, some
say "dandy," gentleman of the Victorian school, Colbeck seems an unlikely person for his job--solving cases and catching the crooks in 1850s England.

It is the dawn of the age of the locomotive and it does not come peaceably. There are enough "foes" of this "new fangled contraption" and many will go to all ends to try to put a stop to it and the new Age that is surely dawning on the British Empire.

Early on we know who the culprits are, as Marston doesn't play games with the reader. Instead, he permits Colbeck and his Sergeant Leeming to methodically put the pieces of the puzzle together and, despite the usual suspects and the usual
obstacles, arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.

A train is highjacked in Chapter One and subsequently and deliberately de-railed. It is carrying gold bullion from the Royal Mint and the day's mail. The robbery is carried out with true military precision (a clue Colbeck quickly picks up).
It is such a perfect and professional job that Scotland Yard knows that there have to be "insiders" involved. A few murders later (Colbeck cleverly links them to the robbery), the case is put to rest.

Marston doesn't do histrionics and not a lot of melodrama. Instead, he tells a story that not only serves to keep out interest in solving the crime but provides much readable background of the time and place. There's the usual violence in a police procedural murder mystery and Marston also throws in a limited romantic turn, too!

Marston's historical series (The Nicholas Bracewell Elizabethan mysteries, the Redmayne series, and the Domesday Books series) stand on their own merit. The author jumps a few centuries and seems to fit right in. That said, readers will hope for more in this interesting era. (Billyjhobbs@tyler.net)

Marston kicks off a new Victorian-era series with this introduction to Inspector Robert Colbeck of the newly-formed Scotland Yard. Set in 1851, the book passes the reader's time enjoyably enough, but is pretty frothy and fluffy and almost instantly forgettable. The story kicks off with the well-organized robbery of a train carrying gold bullion and the mail. The sharp-witted, plainclothed, dandy Insp. Colbeck is assigned to solve the case with utmost haste, as the public's confidence in the relatively new rail technology and mail service must not be shaken. Instantly establishing himself as more perceptive and keen-witted than the rail police, he sets off on a trail of clues and bodies that lead him from the slums of London, to the Crystal Palace Exposition, to a rich country estate. Everything proceeds in due course, from point A to B to C and so on, with a generic romantic subplot tacked on.

Many of the elements feel very familiar and worn. The hero is a emblem of progress and the new ways of doing things, always pushing against traditions and rules. His boss is that classic police stuffed shirt, always grumbling, getting in the way, and complaining about the hero's unorthodox procedures. Colbeck's sidekick is another standby, the sturdy, dependable sergeant who is a little doubtful of the hero, but will follow him into the breach and defend him stoutly against naysayers. The romantic interest is ultimately reduced to damsel in distress plot device, and almost every other supporting character, from the villan's leering henchman, to a huge brawling Irish bouncer is a type rather than a fully-realized individual. And while all the trappings of the story appear to be historically accurate, the dialogue feels awfully modern for some reason.

The book isn't bad, it just isn't that good. Readers interested in Victorian rail crime are better served reading Michael Crichton's non-fiction account of the legendary 1855 Great Train Robbery (subsequently made into a passable film starring Sean Connery).

I'm less convinced than other reviewers here that the Author paid scrupulous attention to period details. The dialogue between characters occasionally incorporates what I consider late 20th Century vernacular into a piece supposedly set in 1850's England.

As a railroad buff, I'd say the author did his homework, and provides some interesting details of English railway practices in that period, but he also lets slip a phrase or two that indicates he's not one of us (i.e. railroad buffs). He refers to the rails as having flanges; (No; that would be the wheels on the rolling stock which have flanges.)

I'd also rate the editing as below-average - I noticed several misspellings and mispunctuations that might get past a typical word processor's spell checking utility (for example: an instead of and), but they SHOULD NOT have gotten past a book editor.

I picked up this book because the title misled me to expect somewhat greater railroading content. It's really just a garden-variety murder mystery that incorporates the railroad as a backdrop.

Victorian England in the 1850s is the dawn of the locomotive age. Trains are supplanting the use of horses, carriages and canals as the method of choice for economic movement of goods and personal travel. But there are those who think of the trains as an industrial abomination, a blight on the pastoral beauty of England's countryside and unthinking "progress" that should be fought and halted on every possible front.

"The Railway Detective" is a very clever and entirely enjoyable introduction to Inspector Robert Colbeck, an intelligent, innovative and imaginative up-and-coming detective in the relatively new Scotland Yard of 1851. He has been assigned by his hidebound, equally unimaginative and outrageously old-fashioned Superintendent to the case of a train robbery. The brilliantly orchestrated theft of an enormous amount of bank gold and a number of bags of en-route mail together with the brutal pistol whipping of the engineer who dared to confront the robbers all pointed in the direction of a heist carefully planned with almost military precision. The use of inside information from the train company, the bank and the post office also seemed to be a foregone conclusion. The questions were why and how??

Marston makes excellent use of all aspects of his Victorian England setting to produce an effective historical novel. Class distinctions are convincingly maintained by the conduct and the dialogue of his cast of characters. But Marston's decision to reveal the culprit of the piece far too early in the novel, reduces what would have been a clever mystery to little more than a cozy and somewhat predictable police procedural that relies for its quality on dialogue and characterization.

Despite this decision that, were I Marston's editor, I might have suggested be done differently, "The Railway Detective" is an enjoyable start to a new series. The love interest in the story was both charming and heartwarming. I'm sure it will form a part of the upcoming novels in a new series that I'm looking forward to. I'll look forward to reading the next novel in the series and seeing if Marston has chosen to make his mystery just a little more challenging.

Recommended.

Paul Weiss

The Railway Detective is a not very well written, 'Boy's own' kind of yarn. It containes predictable, old fashioned dialogue and has a far-fetched plot. I was surprised to learn that the author is a writer of long experience and rather expected to find him to be someone who had had a first-attempt accepted for publication. The book contains an extremely high and unacceptable number of glaring mistakes (typos etc) and should be carefully re proof-read (and re-written?) before being re-printed.

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

Marston jumps into the early days of the railways. Robert Colbeck, a dapper, nattily-dressed detective from the new Metropolitan Police of Scotland Yard, 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, threatening even the new, glass, Crystal Palace Exhibition, the pride of English industry. The scheming crooks even endanger Colbeck's budding infatuation with a poor but beautiful girl, the tearful daughter of an assaulted train driver.

Martin begins at the 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.

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. He seems to win out over them by haughtily staring at them--I cannot explain it otherwise. 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 supercilious 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 a la O'Brien or Clancy--but you need something to make Marston's listless story interesting, don't you?

In sum, Martin is a much better writer. However, both novels take the point of view of railway operators, at various levels, rather than the usual one of passengers who just happen to suffer crime on a train (e.g., Agatha Christie), hence the two stars for attempting to follow a track less traveled.

The first Train Robbery in Britain carried out with speed and military precision. Inspector Colbeck is called in to solve the crime with Victorian tools. Manners and early detecting styles kept me interested. Although it is, strictly speaking, a police procedural, the picture painted of life in Victorian England is real and colorful and remind us of how our lives and communications have changed in the past 100 years. Oh yes,there is a love interest too.

1851: The robbery of a London mail train is author Edward Marston's vehicle for introducing Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck and his faithful partner, Sergeant Victor Leeming. The impact of such a previously unheard-of crime has scarcely sunk in when two brutal murders followed by an attempt to blow up a railroad tunnel point to an evil mastermind at work.

Rest assured that the witty, hard-working and satorially splendid Colbeck will crack the case and win the affections of a certain young lady connected to the robbery.

As much as I loved previous Marston novels and short stories, I was disappointed by his latest creation. Colbeck and the other characters are stereotypical and not terribly interesting. Listening to the characters' voices, the book read like an English version of 'Dragnet' - everyone talked in the same "just-the-facts, ma'am" fashion! The action speeds along thanks to endless railroad excursions by Colbeck & Co. yet the whole is uninvolving. Lastly Marston doesn't devote nearly enough space to bring Victorian London to life.

Sad to say, this first adventure of Robert Colbeck, 'Railway Detective,' is somewhat enjoyable but essentially...fluff.

The Victorian detective mystery is a classic genere but it goes for a ride in a different direction, on an early train, in Marston's THE RAILWAY DETECTIVE.

Before there was Sherlock Holmes, there was Detective Robert Colbeck of Scotland Yard, proto-railfan and serious investigator. In 1851, he embarks on his first adventure, aided by loyal Sergeant Leeming and harassed by his martinent boss.

In this first of an apparent series, Marston starts with the deliberate derailment of a train carrying gold bullion and the Royal Mail. Colbeck must investigate a straightforwardly presented set of suspects, and link the case to a series of subsequent murders.

The plot is without curveballs, googlies, or whatever they are in cricket, or any odd Deau-ex-machina or non-sequiters. Instead, it's a good yarn and the time and place of early-mid victorian London and England are brought to life with nice, crisp descriptive prose.

This isn't a profound or profoundly complex book, but it is fun, diverting, and has some good historical fiction worked in. Mystery buffs and train spotters alike will enjoy it!

Set in London 1851, The Railway Detective is an exciting period piece mystery revolving around a perfectly planned train robbery. Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck must investigate the crime and unravel a tangled web of murder, cover-ups, and ruthless ambition. Escalating into a deadly race against a criminal mastermind, with the life of a beautiful women held hostage in the balance, The Railway Detective skillfully combines high-stakes action with lasting intrigue.