Jim Stringer - Steam Detective

Hello,

I've just started reading The Necropolis Railway by Andrew Martin. This is the first book in the Jim Stringer Series.

I'm enjoying the Railway theme and the way Martin decribes what life was like in Edwardian England.

It's also made me look at the history behind the real London Necropolis and Mauseleum Company.

I wondered if others have read this Series and what they thought of them.

I read the first three some time ago and have just got the fourth one, which I haven't read yet.

Like you I enjoyed both the railway theme and the Edwardian ambience. I have to say that I found the actual detective stories a bit weak, but that didn't spoil my enjoyment of the books.

Hello John, Thanks for your message. I finished the Necropolis Railway and have started the Blackpool Highflyer by Andrew Martin.

Yes, I know of other people who were disappointed in the books because they found the Detective element very weak. Certainly these are not some fast paced Detective series.

It's a strange style of writing but I believe it is how someone of that era may have thought. The Railway theme is of course interesting, and there is the social background to Edwardian times.

Happy reading!

Just finished reading Death on a Branch Line. In fact it's the fifth in Andrew Martin's series. I somehow missed out on the fourth, but managed to pick it up in Waterstones on a recent trip to London so I'll read that one next.

Once again a good Edwardian ambience and a railway theme, with model railways and model soldiers thrown in too, and a passing mention of Sudan, which always interests me. The detective story is slow-paced and sedate, despite taking place over the course of a single weekend. It's rather a pleasant change from fast-paced thrillers.

I was one of the people who didn't like The Necropolis Railway - I never tried any of the others. I felt that it wasn't particularly entertaining, it didn't tell me anything about Edwardian railway workers I didn't already know, and it didn't make me look at the period in a new way. Historical fiction needs to do more than just imitate a past period: it has to be aware of the present as well.

That all meant that the general feebleness of the plot and the slightly unconvincing period slang were just irritating. But I probably read it on a bad day! If I'd read it when I was 14, knowing nothing about the period and setting, I'd probably have loved it.

I must tell Jim Stringer about this next time I see him - in the real world, he's a trade union full-time official in the east of England!

I've just finished reading Murder at Deviation Junction, the fourth in the series. I read it out of sequence, having already read the fifth.

I suspect that those who don't like the series won't like this one, and those who do will. Once again it is quite slow-moving, sedate and quaint. It's not a "whodunit" but the plot does keep you guessing a bit. I enjoyed it.