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Blood on the Tracks

Railway Mysteries

ebook
3 of 3 copies available
3 of 3 copies available

Discover the captivating treasures buried in the British Library's archives. Largely inaccessible to the public until now, these enduring classics were written in the golden age of detective fiction.

"This is the perfect volume for fans of short, high-quality, fair-play detective fiction." —Publishers Weekly

"Never had I been given a tougher problem to solve, and never had I been so utterly at my wits' end for a solution."

A signalman is found dead by a railway tunnel. A man identifies his wife as a victim of murder on the underground. Two passengers mysteriously disappear between stations, leaving behind a dead body.

Trains have been a favourite setting of many crime writers, providing the mobile equivalent of the "locked-room" scenario. Their enclosed carriages with a limited number of suspects lend themselves to seemingly impossible crimes. In an era of cancellations and delays, alibis reliant upon a timely train service no longer ring true, yet the railway detective has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the twenty-first century.

Both train buffs and crime fans will delight in this selection of fifteen railway-themed classic mysteries, featuring some of the most popular authors of their day alongside less familiar names. This is a classic short story collection to beguile even the most wearisome commuter.

These fascinating mystery stories are:

  • For fans of Agatha Christie and Anthony Horowitz
  • Perfect for readers of Classic Crime Fiction and Golden-Age Murder Mysteries
  • Also in the British Library Crime Classics:

    Smallbone Deceased

    The Body in the Dumb River

    Blood on the Tracks

    Surfeit of Suspects

    Death Has Deep Roots

    Checkmate to Murder

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      • Publisher's Weekly

        May 21, 2018
        Edwards’s entertaining railway-themed anthology, part of the British Library Crime Classics series, contains 15 short stories mainly from authors little known today. Arthur Conan Doyle, the most notable exception, kicks things off splendidly with “The Man with the Watches,” in which a “well-known criminal investigator” offers his solution to the bizarre murder of a man who was found shot in a railway carriage, which he seemingly could not have entered, with six gold American watches in his pockets. Others introduce worthy sleuths to a new generation, such as Ernest Bramah’s blind detective, Max Carrados, who cracks the mystery of more than 30 railroad-related deaths in “The Knight’s Cross Signal Problem.” Also noteworthy is R. Austin Freeman’s “The Case of Oscar Brodksi,” the first inverted detective story, in which, as Freeman once noted, “the reader knows everything, the detective knows nothing, and the interest focuses on the significance of trivial circumstances.” This is the perfect volume for fans of short, high-quality, fair-play detective fiction.

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    • English

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