Edward Marston

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

January 1916. Britain is on the brink of enforcing conscription....

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.

Southampton, 1910. When the Oceanic sets sail its ultimate destination is New York. But it must make one very important stop first: at Cherbourg, to pick up internationally renowned financier and art collector J. P. Morgan, fresh from a continental buying spree....

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

On a dark, brooding evening on the Isle of Wight, Agnes Raybould and her companion find themselves an empty first-class compartment on the train. But before long a middle-aged man, clearly in high spirits after dining at his club, joins them....

London, Autumn 1916. When he slips out of a house in the early hours, Simon Wilder is too preoccupied to realise that he is being stalked....

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....

New York, 1908. Private detectives George Dillman and Genevieve Masefield plan to take a break from work upon the Cunard Line’s fleet with the offer of employment upon the Minnesota, a freighter and passenger vessel, which is bound for the Far East.

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....

New York, 1908. While waiting to embark on the Caronia, the Cunard Line’s famous ocean liner, private detectives George Dillman and Genevieve Masefield are startled to witness the boarding of a man and woman in shackles....

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....

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....

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