The Blackpool Highflyer

by Andrew Martin Book 2 in the Jim Stringer series.

First published 2004

Amazon

3.7(680)

Yorkshire, 1905. Jim Stringer is working on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and driving excursion traffic towards Blackpool when a huge grindstone is placed on the track, derailing a train and killing a passenger. The attack turns a summer railway outing into a case involving mill owners, workers, political agitation and the vulnerable points of a system on which whole towns depend.

Jim’s search for the saboteur moves between Halifax, the mills and the crowded holiday railway to Blackpool. Suspicion falls across class lines as further incidents suggest that the derailment was not an isolated act. Martin combines an Edwardian murder mystery with the culture of works excursions, steam traction and industrial northern England at a moment when organised labour and established authority increasingly confront one another.