“Andrew Martin draws readers . . . into the romance, mystery and danger of the railroad age . . . no matter how deeply Jim plunges into the poverty and filth of England’s industrial age, he never loses his sense of wonder at the monstrous beauty of its great machines.”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
“I have stumbled upon a novelist who has done for the early-20th-century English railway what Patrick O’Brian did for the early-19th-century Royal Navy . . . [Martin] is an original voice, and these historical novels are the best I have read this century.”—Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe
“Andrew Martin succeeds brilliantly at re-creating a railwayman’s lot in London in [the early 1900s].”—The Seattle Times
The Independent (London) says that railway detective Jim Stringer is “the best sleuth 200 years of the railways has produced”—and in the fourth thrilling Jim Stringer mystery by Andrew Martin, the detective more than lives up to that high praise.
In MURDER AT DEVIATION JUNCTION (A Mariner Original; Mariner Books; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Pub. Date Jan. 6, 2009; ISBN: 978-0-15-603445-6; $13.95), it is winter 1909, and Jim—whom readers met in The Necropolis Railway, The Blackpool Highflyer, and The Lost Luggage Porter—desperately needs his anticipated New Year’s promotion in order to pay for a nurse for his ailing son. Jumping at any opportunity to impress his supervisor, Jim agrees to investigate a standard assault in a nearby town.
But when his train home hits a snowdrift and a body is discovered buried in the snow, Jim finds himself tracking another dangerous killer. Soon he is on a mad chase to find the suspect, trailing him to the furnaces of Ironopolis and across the country on a dangerous ride to the Highlands. As pursuer becomes pursued, Jim begins to doubt he will ever get his promotion—or that he will survive this case at all.
Andrew Martin was a Spectator (London) Young Writer of the Year. He lives in London. His MURDER AT DEVIATION JUNCTION, a mystery that proves why the Boston Globe says Martin “has done for the early-20th-century English railway what Patrick O’Brian did for the early-19th-century Royal Navy.”
MURDER AT DEVIATION JUNCTION
A Mariner Original
Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
January 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-15-603445-6
$13.95
CONTACT: Patrice Taddonio, Publicist
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company
