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Originally Posted by HarryT
I've now started reading "The Railway Detective", by Edward Marston (a pen-name of the British author Keith Miles). This is a new author for me; I picked up the book for £1 in an Amazon sale a few months ago.
It's the first in a series, and features Inspector Robert Colbeck, a detective who investigates crimes committed on the railways in the early 1850s. My first impressions are favourable.
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I've now finished this. Pretty good for the first in a series, and I have high hopes for the later books in the series.
There was one thing I didn't particularly like about it: the book started out as a traditional detective story, with Colbeck following up the clues in the robbery of a mail train. Half way through the book, we suddenly switch to an "inverted detective story" format - we're told "whodunnit" and the rest of the book then alternates between Colbeck's point of view and that of the "bad guys". I didn't personally find that this worked very well; I would have preferred it had the viewpoint stayed with Colbeck right the way through, with a traditional "denoument" at the end of the story.
I shall certainly continue with the series, despite that.