Andrew Martin – Jim Stringer-Mysteries (1~9)

The Jim Stringer Railway Mystery Collection (1~9)
A series of historical detective novels set at the beginning of the previous century, and featuring a railwayman turned railway policeman called Jim Stringer.

#1. The Necropolis Railway [2002] 7 hours 5 mins, 97 MB, 32 kbps, Read by Hugh Walters
A chance encounter leads young Jim Stringer, a railway porter, to move from Yorkshire to Waterloo, and a better job. But the London of 1903 is a world of garish pubs and tawdry brothels, boxed in by towering blank-faced factories. Jim finds that his duties are mysteriously confined to the strangest corner of the South Western’s business: a railway line that runs to an enormous cemetery. Still more perplexingly, the men he works alongside have formed an instant loathing for him, and his predecessor has disappeared under suspicious circumstances! Can Jim work out what is going on before he too is traveling on a one-way coffin ticket aboard the Necropolis Railway?

#2. The Blackpool Highflyer [2004] 11 hours 33 mins, 159 MB, 32 kbps , Read by Hugh Walters.
When his train is nearly derailed, a young Yorkshire railwayman once more turns sleuth. Since his previous escapade (The Necropolis Railway, 2002), engine cleaner Jim Stringer has gotten closer to his lifelong dream of driving a train. As fireman aboard The Blackpool Highflyer, he gets to ride alongside rugged driver Clive Carter. In 1905, trains like the Highflyer are growing in importance as modes of transportation, even for the working class. During a trip from Halifax to Blackpool, the train suffers what the press calls a “narrow escape” after someone places a large stone on the track. Clive is heralded as a hero for averting total disaster, but a young woman named Margaret Dyson is killed and her son orphaned in the suspicious accident. Jim is well aware that Clive was driving too fast. So when the train goes on an unforeseen hiatus, Jim, driven by guilt as well as curiosity, decides to investigate. His wife, faithful and intuitive, provides moral and corporal support and a nightly sounding board. Jim’s probe provides Martin an excuse to pack the narrative with historical color, as well as a plethora of train lore. Jim encounters radical socialists itching to incite factory hands to an uprising and the possibly corrupt owners who exploit them. Is the death of the 99-year-old chairman of Hind’s Mill due to natural causes or a link to the alleged crime? (Kirkus Reviews)

#3. The Lost Luggage Porter [2006] 9 hours 12 mins, 191 MB, 48 kbps, Read by Hugh Walters
The story is set in winter in 1906. After his adventures as an amateur sleuth, Jim Stringer is now an official railway detective, working from York Station for the mighty North Eastern Railway Company. But he’s not a happy man. As the rain falls incessantly on the city’s ancient, neglected streets, the local paper carries a story highly unusual by York standards: two brothers have been shot to death. Meanwhile, on the station platforms, Jim Stringer meets the Lost Luggage Porter, humblest among the employees of the North Eastern Railway company. He tells Jim a tale which leads him to the roughest part of town, a place where the police constables always walk in twos. Jim is off on the trail of pickpockets, ‘station loungers’ and other small fry of the York underworld. But then in a tiny, one-room pub with a badly smoking fire he enters the orbit of a dangerous, disturbed villain who is playing for much higher stakes…

#4. Murder at Deviation Junction [2007] 8 hours 38 mins, 118 MB, 32 kbps, Read by Hugh Walters
A train hits a snow drift in the frozen Cleveland Hills. In the process of clearing the line, a body is discovered, and so begins a dangerous case for struggling Edwardian railway detective, Jim Stringer. Jim’s new investigation takes him to the mighty blast furnaces of Ironopolis, to Fleet Street in the company of a cynical reporter from “The Railway Rover”, and to a nightmarish spot in the Highlands. Jim’s faltering career in the railway police hangs on whether he can solve the murder – but before long the pursuer becomes the pursued, and Jim finds himself fighting not just for his job, but for his very life as well….

#5. Death on a Branch Line [2008] 8 hours 31 mins, 176 MB, 48 kbps, Read by Richard Burnip
It’s the sweltering summer of 1911, and one Friday evening a special train rolls into York station. It carries a young aristocrat recently found guilty of murdering his father in the sleepy village of Adenwold. He is briefly entrusted into the custody of railway detective Jim Stringer, and he warns of another murder likely to happen in the same village – that of his brother, a reclusive intellectual. Jim and his wife Lydia take the train along the near deserted branch line to Adenwold. Here they encounter a host of likely suspects and the intended victim, as Jim has one weekend in which to stop a murder and unravel a conspiracy of international dimensions….

#6. The Last Train to Scarborough [2009] 9 hours 20 mins, 192 MB, 48 kbps, Read by Richard Burnip
One night, in a private boarding house in Scarborough, a railwayman vanishes, leaving his belongings behind. A reluctant Jim Stringer is sent to investigate. It is March 1914, and Jim Stringer, railway detective, is uneasy about his next assignment. It’s not so much the prospect Scarborough in the gloomy off-season that bothers him, or even the fact that the last railwayman to stay in the house has disappeared without trace. It’s more that his governer, Chief Inspector Saul Weatherhill, seems to be deliberately holding back details of the case – and that he’s been sent to Scarborough with a trigger-happy assistant. The lodging house is called Paradise, but, as Jim discovers, it’s hardly that in reality. It is, however, home to the seductive and beautiful Amanda Rickerby, a woman evidently capable of derailing Jim’s marriage and a good deal more besides. As a storm brews in Scarborough, it becomes increasingly unlikely that Jim will ever ride the train back to York…

#7. The Somme Stations [2011] 9 hours 37 mins, 208 MB, 48 kbps, Read by Richard Burnip
A notice is pinned up in the railway police office on Platform Four at York station, announcing the formation of the North Eastern Railway Battalion. Detective Sergeant Jim Stringer recognises immediately – if not with any great enthusiasm – that he must do his patriotic duty, and join what would become known as The Railway Pals and to set sail for France. So it is that, on July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, Jim finds himself trapped in a too-shallow shell hole, smoking cigarette after cigarette under the bullets and the blazing sun. He calculates his chances of survival, and these are complicated by the fact that both friendships and enmities have been born among the supposed pals. Even before they departed for France, a member of Jim?s unit had been found dead, the body horribly battered. During the stand-off that follows that first day, 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 upon them. 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 …

#8. The Baghdad Railway Club [2012] 9 hours 14 mins, 190 MB, 48 kbps, Read by Richard Burnip
Baghdad 1917. Captain Jim Stringer, invalided from the Western Front, has been dispatched to investigate what looks like a nasty case of treason. He arrives to find a city on the point of insurrection, his cover apparently blown – and his only contact lying dead with flies in his eyes. As Baghdad swelters in a particularly torrid summer, the heat alone threatens the lives of the British soldiers who occupy the city. The recently ejected Turks are still a danger – and many of the local Arabs are none too friendly either. For Jim, who is not particularly good in warm weather, the situation grows pricklier by the day. Aside from his investigation, he is working on the railways around the city. His boss is the charming, enigmatic Lieutenant-Colonel Shepherd, who presides over the gracious dining society called The Baghdad Railway Club – and who may or may not be a Turkish agent. Jim’s search for the truth brings him up against murderous violence in a heat-dazed, labyrinthine city where an enemy awaits around every corner…

#9. Night Train to Jamalpur [2013] 11 hours 12 mins, 154 MB, 32 kbps, Read by Richard Burnip.
North East India, 1923. On the broiling Night Mail from Calcutta to Jamalpur, a man is shot dead in a first class compartment. Detective Inspector Jim Stringer was sleeping in the next compartment along. Was he the intended target? Jim should have known that his secondment to the East Indian Railway, with a roving brief to inspect security arrangements, would not be the working holiday he had hoped for. The country seethes with political and racial tension. Aside from the Jamalpur shooting, someone is placing venomous snakes – including giant king cobras – in the first class compartments of the railway. Jim also has worries on the home front: his daughter has formed a connection with a Maharajah’s son, who may in turn have a connection to Jim’s incredibly rude colleague, the bristling Major Fisher. Jim must do everything he can to keep his family safe from harm, as he unravels the intrigues that surround him…