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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Jim Stringer comes of age, 22 July 2007
I have enjoyed the preceding books in this series. Well-written, vivid period detail and the tang of steam dancing from the pages. However, as has been noted by other reviewers, the weakness in Stringer's previous outings has been the whodunnit plotting, which has not always worked as well as it might.
Happily, for me, this is the book which addresses that shortcoming. Not so much a whodunnit this time, more of a pursuit-storyline [which really gets going in the second half] recalling Buchan's The 39 Steps. Indeed, there is a certain playfulness here, as Martin teases with the readers' expectations concerning the fate of a certain someone who is, more than once, surely just a footfall away from being Scuddered.
Descriptions are perhaps more economical than before, but still convey a rich sense of class, place and time. Curiosities abound; coarse vocabularies in the dialogue between workmates, odd little bits of period detail and some memorable motifs, like the wind-gauge on that viaduct... The snowbound landscapes are beautifully evoked, as are the blast furnaces of "Ironopolis" and the hard men who worked them. Stringer is an outsider in this environment, and we share his trepidation.
There's also some domestic rumblings riding the bow-wave of social change, as Jim's wife Lydia takes up with the Co-operative Society. Again, we share his unease. Well, this particular demographic did, anyway.
But never far away is the railway, with it's fire-breathing Ivatt 4-4-0s, it's ganger's huts and marshalling yards, it's clanking semaphores and lonely wayside halts. We ride the night train and, within the cocoon of our steam-heated compartment, we are transported back to an age when the railways really mattered.
Don't be put off by the rather naff "Steam Detective" marketing tag. If you appreciate a ripping yarn well-told, and have a taste for the Edwardian period as lived by working men, you will surely love this.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
First Class, 6 Oct 2007
December, 1909, and another delightful jouney with young Jim Stringer, 'Steam Detective'. Mr Martin creates a world to match that of Holmes with the rattling cabs of Baker Street replaced by the rattling carriages of the Great Western and beyond.
A body is found and Jim, on the threshold of promotion, believes it is a murder case, not the suicide it seems. Helped (?) by a newshound and impeded by both his previous boss and his new one, it is Jim's determination and doggedness that see him through rather than his deductive powers. His investigations take him on thrilling journeys across the winter landscapes of England and into trouble in the highlands of Scotland, long before Richard Hannay ever bought his ticket for a similar journey.
Despite the tension and thrills and the convoluted (and most unlikely) puzzle of a plot, there is much wit and humour and the descriptions and dialogue are pefectly pitched for the time. I've enjoyed all the Steam detective books and perhaps the plot of this one leans toward some of those more creaky ones that Watson recorded but Jim's relationships with those around him carry the story more than the plot. Anyway, it's rare that such a yarn gives the best line to a horse. First Class.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Whodunnit and why?, 11 Sep 2007
The whodunnit is an extremely popular format, but for me it's always spoiled by the clichéd denouement in which the detective (of whatever era) gathers all the suspects together and says something like "You may be wondering why I've asked you all here...." or some such device. Plotting also tends to be a bit far fetched - if it wasn't, there wouldn't be a story and the book would be finished within half a dozen pages. "Bloke gets drunk in pub and stabs somebody who upsets him then gets arrested." does not a detective novel make.
The only thing which makes whodunnits palatable for me are those which are set against specific historical contexts, e.g.C J Sansom's "Shardlake" novels or even Umberto Eco's "Name Of The Rose". This is how I first came across Andrew Martin's Jim Stringer books, starting with "The Necropolis Railway". Being somewhat romantically attached to the Age of Steam, I enjoyed this and the subsequent novels in the series; the character of Jim Stringer, the social background of his marriage to a "modern" woman; the progress of his career, the railway atmosphere and I even found the plots fairly believable.
I enjoyed "Murder at Deviation Junction" very much for all the above reasons, right up to the point at which the plot was revealed. I just didn't believe it and it seemed a flimsy basis for the drama (and it is certainly dramatic) that had gone before. This rather spoiled the experience for me, and did give me cause to consider whether I would buy the next in the series, presuming of course that there is one.
But perhaps I'm exaggerating the importance of the plot: the writing's terrific, the characters are believable (at least up to the end),the action is pretty much non-stop, and for 99% of the time I thought this was a great read. So I'm only going to knock off one star to reflect my disappointment.
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