Edward Marston

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.

November 1907. George Dillman and Genevieve Masefield sail from Liverpool to New York on the maiden voyage of the luxurious Mauretania....

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....

When unexpected disaster strikes Lord Westfield's Men during a packed performance, Nicholas Bracewell must save the day....

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....

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....

March, 1918. British newspapers carry the dreadful news that the German Spring Offensive has begun, with thousands of British lives lost. Detective Sargeant Joe Keedy is awaiting release from hospital in London and is anxious to resume the fight against crime on the Home Front.

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

Spring, 1858. The route of the Caledonian Railway through the southern uplands of the Scottish countryside is disrupted by a fatal crash....

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....

Guy Fawkes Night, 1857. Joel Heygate is the popular stationmaster at Exeter St David's railway station - an impressive figure of a man replete with frock coat and top hat, bushy eyebrows and walrus moustache....

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....

The audience was merry indeed when a third devilish imp bounded onstage to join the two that had been written into the script. But backstage all was uproar....

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....

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....

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....