The Lost Luggage Porter
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The author of The Necropolis Railway and The Blackpool Highflyer “succeeds brilliantly at re-creating a railwayman’s lot” (The Seattle Times).
It is winter 1906 and Jim Stringer has been promoted from sleuth to official railway detective for York station. His first day on the job, the mysterious Lost Luggage Porter, “a human directory to everything in York,” tips him off to a group of railway thieves. Jim is instructed by his inspector to infiltrate their gang and is drawn along into their plot to carry out a robbery and make their getaway across the English Channel. Soon Jim finds himself swept off to Paris with the thieves, his plight made even worse when his wife is threatened. Can Jim get to her before the villains do?
“Page-turning, confidently written.” —The Guardian
“Riveting . . . Plenty of action, plot twists and moral quandaries help this engaging mystery pick up steam.” —Publishers Weekly
“Stringer’s third adventure has the same engaging voice and lively splashes of historical color as his others.” —Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Martin's riveting third Jim Stringer mystery (after 2007's The Blackpool Highflyer) finds Jim newly made detective for the North Eastern Railway at York station in 1906. His first day starts ominously when a hotel porter's throat is cut and Stringer's prized copies of Railways Magazine go missing. The latter mishap takes him to the lost luggage office, where gospel-quoting porter Edwin Lund tells Stringer about a pickpocket ring working the railways. After two brothers are found shot in the rail yard, Stringer goes undercover as hapless Allan Appleby, joining two men Lund calls Brains and Blocker in lifting wallets while preparing for "the big one." Stringer's suffragist wife remains home awaiting childbirth, and Stringer, dreading the financial needs of parenthood, finds himself thinking about keeping some of "Allan's" ill-gotten gains. Plenty of action, plot twists and moral quandaries help this engaging mystery pick up steam.
