Andrew Martin

It is March 1914, and Jim Stringer is uneasy about his next assignment. It's not so much the prospect of a Scarborough lodging house in the gloomy off-season that bothers him, or even the fact that the last railwayman to stay in the house has disappeared. It's more that his chief inspector seems to be holding back details of the case - and that Jim has been sent to Scarborough with a trigger-happy assistant. Although the lodging house doesn't live up to its name, Paradise, it is home to the seductive and beautiful Amanda Rickerby, a woman capable of derailing Jim's marriage. As a storm brews in Scarborough, it becomes increasingly unlikely that Jim will ever ride the train back to York.

A superbly atmospheric thriller of sabotage, suspicion and steam, The Blackpool Highflyer brings a new twist to tales of Edwardian England and amateur sleuthing. Assigned to drive holidaymakers to the seaside resort of Blackpool in the hot summer of 1905, Jim Stringer is happy to have left behind the grime and danger of life in London. But his dreams of beer and pretty women are soon shattered when his high-speed train meets a huge millstone on the line.

Baghdad 1917. Captain Jim Stringer, invalided from the Western Front, has been dispatched to investigate what looks like a nasty case of treason. He arrives to find a city on the point of insurrection, his cover apparently blown - and his only contact lying dead with flies in his eyes. As Baghdad swelters in a particularly torrid summer, the heat alone threatens the lives of the British soldiers who occupy the city. The recently ejected Turks are still a danger - and many of the local Arabs are none too friendly either. For Jim, who is not particularly good in warm weather, the situation grows pricklier by the day. Aside from his investigation, he is working on the railways around the city. His boss is the charming, enigmatic Lieutenant-Colonel Shepherd, who presides over the gracious dining society called The Baghdad Railway Club - and who may or may not be a Turkish agent. Jim's search for the truth brings him up against murderous violence in a heat-dazed, labyrinthine city where an enemy awaits around every corner.

"It's the sweltering summer of 1911, and one Friday evening a young aristocrat arrives into the custody of detective Jim Stringer, a man recently found guilty of murdering his father in the sleepy village of Adenwold. He warns Jim of another murder likely to happen in the same village - that of his brother, a reclusive intellectual. When Jim and his wife Lydia arrive at Adenwold they encounter a host of likely suspects and the intended victim, and suddenly Jim has one weekend in which to stop a murder and unravel a conspiracy of international dimensions ..."--Publisher's description.

In the summer of 1942, Gyles Mackrell - a decorated First World War pilot and tea plantation overseer, performed a series of heroic rescues in the hellish jungles of Japanese-occupied Burma - with the aid of 20 elephants. At the age of 53, Mackrell went into the Chaukan Pass on the border of North Burma and Assam. Here, Mackrell and a team of elephant riders rescued Indian army soldiers, British civilians and their Indian servants, from the pursuing Japanese, directing the elephants through jungle passes and raging rivers, and territory infested with sand flies, mosquitoes and innumerable leeches. Those he saved were all on the point of death from starvation or fever: that summer was spent in a fight against time.

Andrew Martin recreates five of these famous train journeys by travelling abroad their nearest modern day equivalents. Sometimes their names have survived, even if only as a footnote on a timetable leaflet, but what has usually - if not always - disappeared is the extravagance and luxury.

North East India, 1923. On the broiling Night Mail from Calcutta to Jamalpur, a man is shot dead in a first class compartment. Detective Inspector Jim Stringer was sleeping in the next compartment along. Was he the intended target? Jim should have known that his secondment to the East Indian Railway, with a roving brief to inspect security arrangements, would not be a working holiday. The country seethes with political and racial tension. Jim also has worries on the home front: his daughter has formed a connection with a Maharajah's son, who may in turn have a connection to Jim's incredibly rude colleague, the bristling Major Fisher. Jim must do everything he can to keep his family safe from harm, as he unravels the intrigues that surround him.

From the author of The Necropolis Railway and The Blackpool Highflyer comes another ingenious thriller featuring Jim Stringer. It is winter 1906 and Jim has been promoted from sleuth to official railway detective for York station. His first day on the job, the mysterious Lost Luggage Porter, "a human directory to everything in York," tips him off to a group of railway thieves. Jim is instructed by his Inspector to infiltrate their gang and is drawn along into their plot to carry out a robbery and make their getaway across the Channel. Soon Jim finds himself swept off to Paris with the thieves, his plight made even worse when threats are made against his wife. Can Jim get to get to her before the villains do?

On purely humanitarian grounds, Andrew Martin recently took over some of the household chores from his wife. In this book he shares the fruits of his experiences, from loading the washing machine unaided to vacuuming (when the hoover wasn't working.)