"London, 1851. The London to Birmingham mail train is robbed and derailed, injuring the driver and others aboard. With the opening of the Great Expedition at hand, interest is mounting in the engineering triumphs of the railways, but not everyone feels like celebrating. Planned with military precision, this crime challenges the new Police Force to its limits and leads Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck to discover a tangled web of murder, blackmail and destruction." "As the momentum gains pace, Colbeck closes in on the criminal masterminds. But just as the police begin to think the villains are within their grasp, events take an unexpected turn - Madeleine Andrews, the beautiful daughter of the injured train driver, becomes an unwilling pawn in the criminals' game. In a final race against time, good and evil, new and old, are pitted against each other. But will the long arm of the law be quick enough?"--BOOK JACKET.

Spring, 1858. The route of the Caledonian Railway through the southern uplands of the Scottish countryside is disrupted by a fatal crash. Inspector Robert Colbeck and Sergeant Victor Leeming are called from the crime of London to investigate, and must contend with old enemy Superintendent Rory McTurk to uncover the criminals behind the disaster.

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. Hastily readying himself and dashing off a few lines for the porter to summon his friend Nicholas Thorpe, 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.

1859. St Mary's Church, Spondon. A little girl playing hide-and-seek jumps into a freshly-dug grave to find a dead man already occupying it. It is the body of Cedric Norton, a senior director of the Midland Railway. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming travel to Derbyshire to investigate.

1854. As the Cardiff-bound train puffs out of Paddington Station, young Hugh Kellow wraps a protective arm around his large valise. He has been entrusted with a priceless silver coffee pot, designed in the shape of a locomotive, by his elderly silversmith employer. But two of Hugh's fellow passengers are taking an enormous interest in the young man and his precious cargo. When a dead body is discovered in a room at the Cardiff Railway Hotel, beside an empty valise, the great Railway Detective Robert Colbeck and his trusty sergeant Victor Leeming are called in to investigate; and face a whole host of unexpected problems.

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. Unfortunately, boiler smith Frank Rodman is headed for the grave sooner than he'd expected, or he will be once his missing head is found. Colbeck, the Railway Detective, finds his investigation into Rodman's murder mired in contradictions. Was the victim a short-tempered brawler, or a committed Christian and chorister who aimed to better himself? On the trail of Rodman's enemy as the season starts to bite, Colbeck finds little festive cheer in the twists and turns of this peculiar case.

An eagerly awaited collection of brand new, specially commissioned short stories from the master of historical crime fiction Edward Marston, featuring his quick-witted Railway Detective, Inspector Robert Colbeck. In this thrilling selection of stories, a young porter is found dead in a coal tub; Colbeck devises a trap to catch a thief; and a burnt train carriage holds a gruesome secret in a small coastal village. As Colbeck and his trusty aide Sergeant Victor Leeming begin to piece together clues and motives for each crime, it becomes clear the pair must stay a step ahead of the culprits to solve the cases. With a new suspect at every turn, can the duo unearth the real villains? Including 'The End of the Line' and 'The Barber of Ravenglass', jealousy, vengeance and duplicity all collide in this supercharged anthology, proving once again, that Inspector Colbeck is the master of mysteries.