The Last Train to Scarborough

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.

Thirty-five short stories from the top names in British crime fiction, by the likes of Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith, Jake Arnott, Val McDermid, and more.

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…