Edward Marston

London, 1851. With the opening of the Great Exhibition at hand, interest in mounting in the engineering triumphs of the railways, but not everyone feels like celebrating....

An exquisite silver coffee-pot in the shape of a locomotive is on its way to Cardiff....

Yorkshire 1855. When Colonel Aubrey Tarleton walks into the path of a speeding train....

On the shocking discovery of a passenger's body on the Great Western Railway excursion train, Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant, Sergeant Victor Leeming, are dispatched to the scene....

December 1864. As a cold winter wind scours the Worcestershire countryside, an excursion train comes through a tunnel in the Malvern Hills, only to be confronted by a blockage on the line ahead....

The small village of Maldon is controlled by the wealthy and rapacious FitzCorbucion family, led by Hamo FitzCorbucion, the lord of Blackwater Castle. When his eldest son, Guy, is found murdered, an enraged Hamo demands justice....

April, 1867. A train departs King's Cross station bound for Lincoln. Among the passengers is a man attired in the garb of one in high ecclesiastical office. He is accompanied by a brawny man carefully carrying a large leather bag, who ensures that they are not joined by any other travellers in...

Derby Day at Epsom Downs and a multitude of people crowd to watch the races: dukes and dustmen, bishops and beggars, privileged ladies and prostitutes....

The Railway Detective faces his most dangerous adversary yet. It is 1852, and Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant Sergeant Victor Leeming are faced with their most complex and difficult case to date....

A man’s body is found mutilated in Savernake Forest and the residents of Bedwyn sleep uneasy at night, fearing a monster. When Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret arrive, they discover that the locals are harbouring dark secrets and that the real killer may be closer to home....

The frontier zone of Archenfield in Herefordshire is a no-man's-land, which acts as a bulwark between Norman-controlled English soil and the Welsh border....

The year is 1855, and on the LNWR train to London, a criminal is being escorted to his appointment with the hangman....

Soldier Ralph Delchard and lawyer Gervase Bret lead a group of the king's finest commissioners into the war-torn lands of Yorkshire to settle land claims and compile the Domesday Book. One island of wealth and luxury remains in Yorkshire: the castle of merchant Aubrey Maminot....

September 1907. George Dillman sets sail from Liverpool to New York on the Lusitania's maiden voyage. Posing as a passenger, Dillman is in fact an undercover detective hired by the Cunard Line to keep an eye out for petty crimes....

Nicolas Picard is riding home from Exeter when he's attacked by a snarling wildcat. Yet, when the body is found, there are lacerations on his neck put there by a human hand....

The ordered calm of Gloucester Abbey is shattered by the murder of one of the monks....

Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret are royal commissioners appointed to investigate irregularities that come to light during the compilation of the Domesday Book in the reign of William the Conqueror. They arrive in Canterbury to discover that the body of a young girl has been found....

Nicholas befriends a young beggar who is trying to eke out a living as a counterfeit crank, pretending to have spectacular epileptic fits in order to get money from gullible bystanders....

Three powerful Norman lords and a Saxon thegn watch their horses competing in a race near Woodstock. When one of the riders is murdered during the race, suspicion falls on the Saxon....

Hugh d’Avranches, Earl of Chester, is enraged when his hawk is killed by an arrow in the Forest of Delamere. When two poachers are caught, he orders their execution, yet neither of them fired the arrow....