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....

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.

Shrewsbury, 1866. Julian Lockyer is an imposing gentleman in his late fifties. Having reserved a room for the night at the Station Hotel, he asks to be called early in the morning because he has a train to catch.

When the engines finally met, there was a deafening clash and the Brighton Express twisted and buckled, tipping its carriages on to the other line. It was a scene of utter devastation....

East Anglia, 1861. Alone in a first-class carriage, the Swarbricks are robbed at gunpoint. But when the universally admired Swarbrick fights back, the train robber takes more than money and jewellery, killing the man working to unify East Anglia's tangle of railway networks....

Henry Beaumont keeps a renowned pack of foxhounds, quick, brave and ruthless at the kill. One December hunt, the dogs uncover more than a fox in the woodlands - brushing aside dead leaves, Beaumont finds the crushed body of Martin Reynard, a former member of his own household....

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

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....

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

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....

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....

December 1860. Headed for the morning shift at the Swindon Locomotive Works is an army of men pouring out of terraced houses built by the GWR, a miniature town and planned community that aims to provide for its employees from cradle to grave....

1860, Wimborne, Dorset. Rebecca Tullidge, miserably married to her callous husband, is having an affair. Much to her distress, she trips over her lover's dead body on the railway tracks....

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....

Following a string of successful performances along the west coast, the Moscardi Circus is travelling by train to Hexham on the Newcastle to Carlisle Railway for their next show. Yet a collision on the track causes pandemonium....

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

Egypt, 1908. George Dillman and Genevieve Masefield, used to the grand opulence of the Cunard cruise line, are at first disappointed with the Marmora, a small, unimpressive ship owned by the P&O shipping line....

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....

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....