My first encounter with Andrew Martin's Jim Stringer series, 'Death on a Branch Line' is a mystery which owes a great deal to the likes of John Buchan and 'The Riddle of the Sands', concerning as it does mysterious and murderous goings-on in an isolated Yorkshire village which draws railway detective Jim Stringer and his spirited wife Lydia into a race against time to save an innocent man's life. The shadow of war against Germany is never far away, and the sense of unease in the village is well described, as are the characters of Lydia and Jim's Chief, who come across particularly well.
If I have one reservation, it's that the language is occasionally a little too strong for the period setting, with a few expletives I'd normally expect to find in something more contemporary. Otherwise the evocation and atmosphere are good, the characterisation something of a curate's egg and the resolution satisfying if tinged with bleakness. But for a modern take on the classic adventure stories of the Edwardian period, it's certainly worth a read.
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