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Book Description
A stunning historical novel of crime in the trenches
Product Description
On the first day of the Somme enlisted railwayman Jim Stringer lies trapped in a shell hole, smoking cigarette after cigarette under the bullets and the blazing sun. He calculates his chances of survival - even before they departed for France, a member of Jim's unit had been found dead.
During the stand-off that follows, Jim and his comrades must operate by night the vitally important trains carrying munitions to the Front, through a ghostly landscape of shattered trees where high explosive and shrapnel shells rain down. Close co-operation and trust are vital. Yet proof piles up of an enemy within, and as a ferocious military policeman pursues his investigation into the original killing, the finger of accusation begins to point towards Jim himself . . .
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The Somme Stations is Andrew Martin's seventh book featuring Jim Stringer. The series usually follows Stringer's investigations as a Detective at the York office of the North Eastern Railway Police. This one though takes place during the First World War. It begins after most of the events in the book have concluded with Jim's wife writing letters to a friend as he recovers from injuries sustained during his time in France and with a murder charge hanging over him. How we got to this point is recounted in first person by Jim himself, beginning with his enlistment and followed by his war service, the tone being very like an extended letter home or a personal memoir. It's colourfully written with language authentic to the time and location, though thankfully it doesn't try to annotate the local accents. I'm a northern lad myself, of the red rose variety rather than the white, but even so books that insist on putting accent onto the page do become tedious fast unless the writer is something of a genius. The writer here keeps it simple. He builds the ensemble characters/suspects competently, choosing to focus on their little quirks and eccentricities to quickly establish the who's who. It's well done and something a bit different. Stringer retains no police rank in this book and gives a suspect's point of view to the investigation which takes a while to get started and then simmers quietly in the background as Stringer's regiment is trained, goes to France, including that fateful day, July 1st on the Somme, and later establishing a network of light railways, ferrying ammunition to artillery emplacements. Even without the mystery element to the story, the fictional war memoir is very well researched, amusing, poignant and authentic sounding. Add to that the author's obvious love for all things relating to steam locomotion and you have an unusual addition to the crime fiction genre.
This review was from an Advance Reading Copy.
This review was from an Advance Reading Copy.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
An interesting mix of First World War action, Detective investigation and Narrow Gauge Railways. Once again Andrew Martin has brought to life the World of Jim Stringer [Steam Detective] You can almost smell the Steam and the cordite. His loving wife Lydia always ready to help in any investigation and his railway colleagues from the North Eastern Railway. Can't wait for no;8.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
There are so many detective series around nowadays that an author has to search quite hard to find his or her own niche, but Andrew Martin seems to have ably colonised the world of early-20th century railways for the genre.
He clearly knows a good deal about the subject, but he wears his knowledge lightly and his novels never descend into turgid train-spotting. I think this is largely because his fascination is not so much with the hardware of the railways as the complex social structures that they were, especially the teeming life of a big city station. An example: would you have imagined that there was such a post as 'Deputy Superintendent of the Ticket Office?' Before reading this book, I wouldn't, but Andrew Martin would, and could probably tell you where in the pecking order he came in relation to a head porter or the guard on a mainline express.
The fact that the background is so interesting means that he doesn't have to try too hard to make his detective complex, so for once we're treated to a non-alcoholic crime-fighter with a happy home life - quite a rarity! Jim Stringer's main quality is - not naivety exactly, more an open-minded interest, which is useful for the reader, because the everyday world he lives in might as well be a different universe for us, so we need a pair of open eyes.
This book is rather different from the previous ones (or at least, the three I've read) in that real-life events impinge much more - which is unavoidable really, since the events take place in 1915-16.
So Jim Stringer joins up, and after a bit of digging work on an atmospherically evoked Spurn Head is sent off to the Western Front.
The bar for writing about WW1 has been raised so high by the likes of Sebastian Faulks and Pat Barker that an author has to be careful how he treads. However, even more so than a large railway, an army is a hugely complex organism with plenty of angles as yet unexplored. Here, of course, Andrew Martin takes the construction and operation of the narrow-gauge railways which served the front line, and shows the precarious lives of the men driving trainloads of high explosives through an artillery attack.
The work proceeds at breakneck pace - 'Old Station' is so-called because it was built 10 days ago! - and there's no guarantee that the line will still be there tomorrow, or even for the return trip later today.
The plot itself is workmanlike enough, involving life both before and during the war, and the railway as well as the army, and Jim Stringer even finds himself in danger of being tried for his life. This for me was largely incidental though, as I was absorbed in the recreation of a vanished world.
One tiny quibble, which mainly accounts for the loss of a star, but which I would expect to be sorted in a later edition: in two or three places the name 'Tinsley' is used when the author clearly means 'Harvey.' Did the author maybe switch the names halfway through and not quite complete the rework? It wouldn't really matter, except that as you'll see when you read it, it's quite important to keep the two characters separate in your mind!
He clearly knows a good deal about the subject, but he wears his knowledge lightly and his novels never descend into turgid train-spotting. I think this is largely because his fascination is not so much with the hardware of the railways as the complex social structures that they were, especially the teeming life of a big city station. An example: would you have imagined that there was such a post as 'Deputy Superintendent of the Ticket Office?' Before reading this book, I wouldn't, but Andrew Martin would, and could probably tell you where in the pecking order he came in relation to a head porter or the guard on a mainline express.
The fact that the background is so interesting means that he doesn't have to try too hard to make his detective complex, so for once we're treated to a non-alcoholic crime-fighter with a happy home life - quite a rarity! Jim Stringer's main quality is - not naivety exactly, more an open-minded interest, which is useful for the reader, because the everyday world he lives in might as well be a different universe for us, so we need a pair of open eyes.
This book is rather different from the previous ones (or at least, the three I've read) in that real-life events impinge much more - which is unavoidable really, since the events take place in 1915-16.
So Jim Stringer joins up, and after a bit of digging work on an atmospherically evoked Spurn Head is sent off to the Western Front.
The bar for writing about WW1 has been raised so high by the likes of Sebastian Faulks and Pat Barker that an author has to be careful how he treads. However, even more so than a large railway, an army is a hugely complex organism with plenty of angles as yet unexplored. Here, of course, Andrew Martin takes the construction and operation of the narrow-gauge railways which served the front line, and shows the precarious lives of the men driving trainloads of high explosives through an artillery attack.
The work proceeds at breakneck pace - 'Old Station' is so-called because it was built 10 days ago! - and there's no guarantee that the line will still be there tomorrow, or even for the return trip later today.
The plot itself is workmanlike enough, involving life both before and during the war, and the railway as well as the army, and Jim Stringer even finds himself in danger of being tried for his life. This for me was largely incidental though, as I was absorbed in the recreation of a vanished world.
One tiny quibble, which mainly accounts for the loss of a star, but which I would expect to be sorted in a later edition: in two or three places the name 'Tinsley' is used when the author clearly means 'Harvey.' Did the author maybe switch the names halfway through and not quite complete the rework? It wouldn't really matter, except that as you'll see when you read it, it's quite important to keep the two characters separate in your mind!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Fascinating but so-so plot
The Somme Stations is the seventh Jim Stringer railway detective series and the first I've read. It can certainly be read as a standalone. Read more
Published 22 days ago by Rob Kitchin
At last, a proper book lad !!
After abandoning numerous books full of flashbacks, dream sequences, streams of consciousness etc. it was a sheer joy to come across this which had a beginning, middle and end,(in... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Sparky
Brilliant read
I bought several of the Andrew Martin books as a gift for my partner. He said The Somme Stations is a very good read and really enjoying it therefore looking forward to reading... Read more
Published 1 month ago by A. W. Laking
Another EXCELLENT Jim Stringer novel
I cannot recommend Andrew Martin's Jim Stringer series highly enough. This latest is fully up to his very high standard. Read more
Published 4 months ago by MallingFox
The Somme Stations
I really enjoyed this story as it also taught me some things about the First World War which I didn't know about. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Auntie Shirley
the somme stations
Wel worth - as with all Andrew Martin " Jim Stringer " novels - reading . Now waiting for the next installment in the series .
Published 7 months ago by Malc Burton
A very good read
The Somme Stations has sat in my pile of books to read for some time, for some reason I was a little reluctant to read this latest installment of the Jim Stringer series, I have no... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Robin
A good tale of the WW1 narrow gauge railways
Well written, with considerable knowledge of the railways as you would expect from Andrew Martin. Recreated the period and the atmosphere of WW1, again as he does so well.
Published 10 months ago by Clem Neville
Atmospheric detective novel
I think this is the seventh in the Jim Stringer - Railway Detective series. I think I read and quite enjoyed the first one, but the next five seem to have passed me by. Read more
Published 10 months ago by N. Brett
Cicil War in World War I
Not another novel about the Great War! you might say. Yes. It does have mud, horses, men and machines sunk deep in the mud. And bodies, gas and tanks. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Pag Clack
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