Jim Stringer Books

Bright and ambitious, young Jim Stringer moves from the English countryside to London, eager to begin work as a railwayman at Waterloo Station. It is 1903, the dawn of the Edwardian age, when steam runs the nation and the railways drive progress. Jim finds, however, that his duties involve a graveyard shift, literally - a railway line that takes coffins from London morgues to the gigantic new cemeteries being dug in the city's outskirts. He also learns that the men he works alongside have formed an instant loathing of him - and his predecessor has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Can Jim work out what's going on before he's issued a one-way ticket aboard the Necropolis Railway?

It is the summer of 1905 and Jim Stringer is copiloting a special train filled with overheated excursionists headed to Blackpool, the seaside resort on the English coast. At the moment when the train picks up speed, a huge rock comes into view farther down the tracks; it lies directly in their path. Full stop of the engine; full steam ahead with the mystery. As he did in The Necropolis Railway, Stringer doffs his railway hat and dons his detective’s derby, assisted once more by "the wife" and her brilliant detecting skills. Capturing the world of railway stations and locomotives during the Edwardian Age, The Blackpool Highflyer carries readers to a place where dark shadows lurk behind innocence and the solution to the mystery waits at the end of the line.

York, Winter, 1906 - two brothers have been shot to death. Meanwhile, 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 . . .

From the author of The Necropolis Railway, The Blackpool Highflyer, and The Lost Luggage Porter comes another thrilling mystery featuring railway detective Jim Stringer. It is winter 1909, and Jim desperately needs his anticipated New Year’s promotion in order to pay for a nurse for his ailing son. Jumping at any opportunity to impress his supervisor, Jim agrees to investigate a standard assault in a nearby town. But when his train home hits a snowdrift and a body is discovered buried in the snow, Jim finds himself tracking another dangerous killer. Soon he is on a mad chase to find the suspect, trailing him to the furnaces of Ironopolis and across the country on a dangerous ride to the Highlands. As pursuer becomes pursued, Jim begins to doubt he will ever get his promotion— or that he will survive this case at all.

It''s the sweltering summer of 1911, and one Friday evening a young aristocrat arrives into the custody of detective Jim Stringer, a man recently found guilty of murdering his father in the sleepy village of Adenwold. He warns Jim of another murder likely to happen in the same village - that of his brother, a reclusive intellectual. When Jim and his wife Lydia arrive at Adenwold they encounter a host of likely suspects and the intended victim, and suddenly Jim has one weekend in which to stop a murder and unravel a conspiracy of international dimensions...

One night, in a private boarding house in Scarborough, a railwayman vanishes, leaving his belongings behind... It is the eve of the Great War, 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. And when Jim encounters the seductive and beautiful Amanda Rickerby a whole new personal danger enters Jim''s life...

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 . . .

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.

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 ...