Blood on the Tracks by Martin Edwards

Blood on the Tracks by Martin Edwards ISBN-13: 9781464209697 Paperback Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press Released: July 3, 2018

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description from Goodreads:
A signalman is found dead by a railway tunnel. A man identifies his wife as a victim of murder on the underground. Two passengers mysteriously disappear between stations, leaving behind a dead body.

Trains have been a favourite setting of many crime writers, providing the mobile equivalent of the "locked-room" scenario. Their enclosed carriages with a limited number of suspects lend themselves to seemingly impossible crimes. In an era of cancellations and delays, alibis reliant upon a timely train service no longer ring true, yet the railway detective has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the twenty-first century.

Both train buffs and crime fans will delight in this selection of fifteen railway-themed mysteries, featuring some of the most popular authors of their day alongside less familiar names. This is a collection to beguile even the most wearisome commuter.


My Review:
Blood on the Tracks a collection of 15 short story mysteries published in the late 1800s up to the 1950s. Most of the stories were from the detective's point of view and were tales of old cases, cases where the detective quickly figured out whodunit but still needed to catch the criminal, or stories where the detective found clues, put them together, and solved the crime. There were two ghost stories, and a couple stories from the murderer's point of view. Not all of the stories were about murder. And trains--while always mentioned--didn't play a large role in several of the stories. There was no sex. Most stories contained no bad language, but five stories had one to five uses of bad language. Overall, I enjoyed the interesting detectives and mysteries. I'd recommend this collection.

Included stories:
The Man with the Watches by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Mystery of Felwyn Tunnel by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace
How He Cut His Stick by Matthias McDonnell Bodkin
The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway by Baroness Orczy
The Affair of the Corridor Express by Victor L. Whitechurch
The Case of Oscar Brodski by R. Austin Freeman
The Eighth Lamp by Roy Vickers
The Knight’s Cross Signal Problem by Ernest Bramah
The Unsolved Puzzle of the Man with No Face by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Railway Carriage by F. Tennyson Jesse
Mystery of the Slip-Coach by Sapper
The Level Crossing by Freeman Wills Crofts
The Adventure of the First-Class Carriage by Ronald Knox
Murder on the 7.16 by Michael Innes
The Coulman Handicap by Michael Gilbert


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


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