I never cease to be amazed at just how micro, micro crime genres can get. Fair enough CJ Sansom trawling round Tudor London dragging a dozen Susannah Gregorys in his wake. Or the European grand tour. Or the easy appeal of Britain in the late 30s. I can even see how you get more than one novel out of Enlightenment mittel Europe. But railway crime 1860-1910? Where the hell did that come from?

I don’t know if Andrew Martin was the first out of the marshalling yard, but he is surely the best. His novels set on the railways of the Edwardian North of England are top entertainment, balancing as they do page-turning storylines with a thoroughly convincing evocation of time and place.

The first three in the series – The Necropolis Railway, The Blackpool Highflyer and The Lost Luggage Porter - trace the emergent career of stoker turned steam detective, Jim Stringer, as he is sucked into a new world. He is resourceful and smart yet somehow perplexed by people, procedures and small p politics. Not to mention the mysteries of being newly married to a wife with both sufragette and social aspirations.This is in not some Fred Dibnah-esque excursion into the post Industrial Age. In Stringer’s world, railways are the defining technology of the day, changing the entire fabric of the country and everybody’s place within it. It is a world of cobbled streets, gas lamps, backstreet pubs and the rest but is also a world where old certainties are gone as social and geographical connections to place are broken forever. People like Jim are making their way in this new world, others are confused or left behind by it. Others still, some criminal, ruthlessly exploit the margins for profit. Running through it all are the trains themselves – huge, gleaming, noisy, exotic harbingers of a stranger, bigger and harder world to come and both Martin and Stringer are completely in thrall to their dangerous glamour.

So to the latest episode, Death On A Branch Line. Ordinarily a new Andrew Martin is cause for celebration, but the previous installment, Murder At Deviation Junction, was something of a misstep. Perhaps Martin became bored with the world he had built, but MADJ with its story of Highland derring-do strayed way over into John Buchan country. All very entertaining but for me, too far-fetched and too far-removed from the spirit of the series to be anything other than disappointing.

At times DOABL teeters on the edge but in the end Martin pulls it off. He continues to write beautifully, the minor characters are well-drawn and tiny details bring his settings sharply to life. The action, when it comes, is exciting. The main plot however, takes Stringer out of York and into the countryside to save a local squire convicted of murder and due to hang the following Monday and maybe into a German plot to steal army mobilisation plans. Stringer is ably abetted in his attempts to uncover the real murderer, save the Toff and foil the dastardly plot by his thoroughly modern wife, Lydia.

I enjoyed DOABL, but there were moments I thought Martin was going to jump the shark. There is still a bit too much Riddle Of The Sands and Lydia’s involvement strikes me as shoe-horning in a good character as a way of giving them something to do, but in the end the story is of a smaller and more perfectly formed scale than MADJ.

However, if this is to be a crossroads for the Jim Stringer series I hope the secret service stuff doesn’t point the way forward. Far better to concentrate on life around Jim’s place of work, his home and his pub. If that is no longer big or interesting enough then perhaps the series needs a breather, while Martin looks elsewhere. As a top notch storyteller and evoker of worlds, I would read whatever he comes up with next. So, for fans of the series DOABL is worthy addition and for newcomers, although not the best starting point, should be plenty good enough to get them into the rest.

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