Tragedy on the Branch Line

By: Edward Marston

Narrated by: Sam Dastor

Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's Summary

When Robert Pomeroy, a young undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, finds a letter slipped under his door in the early hours of a rainy day, he flies into a panic. He hurries to the railway station. But he doesn’t reach his destination alive. 

Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are called upon to investigate this tragedy on the railway. It soon becomes apparent that Cambridge’s hopes of success in the forthcoming boat race rested on Pomeroy’s shoulders. 

With academic disputes, romantic interests and a sporting rivalry with Oxford in play, the railway detective will have his work cut out to disentangle the threads of Pomeroy’s life in order to answer the truth of his death.

©2021 Edward Marston (P)2021 Soundings

Disappointing narration

Why has Sam Dastor changed the voices of two of the main characters? It was jarring to listen to and off putting. Madeline and Alan have slipped down the social scale since we last met them!! What happened?
I have enjoyed the Railway Detective novels up to this one.
Such a pity as in other respects the novel was interesting enough.........

What has happened to the Railway Detective?

What has happened to this series from Edward Marston? I used to enjoy the Railway Detective novels, but ever since Robert Colbeck married Madeline Andrews, the books have become increasingly less interesting as detective novels and more of a soap opera. While the two were courting there seemed to be a reason for the side stories featuring Madeline and her father, but since their marriage, these side-issues, which now feature Madeline and friend Lydia Quayle rather than Madeline and her father, have no relevance at all and are just an unnecessary distraction. In this book I sighed heavily with frustration each time the scene cut back to Madeline, and her story. Indeed, the mystery seemed to take up only a fraction of the book, the rest being given over to either Madeline's tale of angst, or her father's - both extraneous material that detracted from the original detective storyline.

I like my detective stories to be just that, detective stories, but with Edward Marston one does need to contend with a smattering of romance, which is usually fairly light and reasonably well-integrated, so as not to detract from the main story. However, this budding romance between Lydia Quayle and Alan Hinton is firstly, totally gratuitous, and is progressing at so slow a pace that one dispairs of them ever getting together and getting this unnecessary storyline over, done and out of the books completely.

Listening to this audiobook, in addition to all the extraneous pap, Sam Dastor seems to have given some of the characters completely different voices which, of course, makes them into totally different characters. Madeline had gone from a simple, reasonably well spoken (considering her background) young woman, to a blousy, cockney barmaid, and her new voice jarred every time I heard it. Alan Hinton has also changed from again, a respectable sounding, enthusiastic constable to what sounded to me like the village idiot. Why this change in personality for these characters, because that is what changing the voices does, it changes the core of the character's personality?

Finally, a strange note of social insecurity that was never there before seems to have crept in. Madeline Colbeck, having accepted Robert Colbeck as an equal during their courting days seemingly without any feelings of inferiority despite her only being a train driver's daughter and he a middle-class Oxford graduate and ex-barrister, suddenly seemed to have developed feelings of inadequacy regarding the class she has elevated herself to. This made no sense at all, because such feelings, if Madeline was ever capable of them, should surely have come while she was on the way up, not when she had reached the summit and was thriving well.

I hope Marston can get these books back on track because if not, this will be the last of this series that I will be reading. I have already given up on the Home Front books because of the increasing prevalence of extraneous storylines - to wit, Alice Marmion's romance with Joe Keedy, and Paul Marmion's disappearance. A detective story is a detective story, and a romance is a completely different kind of book, with a very different readership, and ne'er the twain shall meet.

Tragedy in the narration

The story is getting a bit weak which is sad enough but added to that for some bizarre reason this narrator seems not to have bothered to listen to previous editions to get a feel for the characters.
Madeline Colbech has gone from being a nice well spoken young lady to a cockney fish wife ? why ?

sad to say I will not be partaking of another book if the same narrator is employed to perform.

Another great story

Loved this story full of the usual twists and turns and it would have been so enjoyable apart from the narrator who was not the usual person and he made loved characters sound terrible will think twice before I listen to another book of this narrator is reading it

Really Bad Narration

This narrator for some reason changed the voice of the Detective’s wife trying to make it a more common and then switching back to the normal voice. Had to laugh when he gave one of the characters another detectives Voice. I think he had a bad day at the recording studio.

Good entertainment

Edward Marston is clearly a practised writer. Some of his dialogue can be a bit prosaic but the plot whistles along and it is a very pleasant way to pass an hour or two. The different readers of the series don’t quite agree on some of the voices and in this version, for example, Maddie, Colbeck’s wife, sounds comically cockney. Another reader in another Colbeck adventure made the feared leader of the Metropolitan police, speak with a Brummie drawl, which seems most unlikely. Nonetheless well worth a listen - you’ll enjoy it!

Easy story, odd narration

These are easy crime stories to listen to and they plod along sedately. Quite often I have to replay a chapter having been lulled into sleep by the tone of the narrator or because one section merges into another without so much as a breath between scenes or paragraphs. All the voices are very similar but at least this story didn't involve the Welsh or Liverpudlians - those accents were like nails on a chalkboard. Everyone in this story seemed to come from Devon! A tad confusing, just don't listen to whilst driving!