"The Somme Stations" by Andrew Martin

[daggers]

This is WW1 fiction told through Jim Stringer, a railway police detective based at York who has featured in six earlier books. He relates how railwaymen at York were 'volunteered' into a [real] New Army battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers. During their training near Hull one of their number dies in mysterious circumstances. Enquiries into the death continue after the battalion's arrival in France just before the 1st July 1916. Stringer becomes the driver of a narrow-gauge locomotive hauling ammunition and other material to the front and emerges as one of those suspected of murder.

An author's note explains that he has played around with timings but much else is closely based on fact.

There is plenty of detail of the scenes behind the trenches and of the rail operations. The book should appeal to fans of crime stories and of the WW1 scene in general.

[Published by Faber & Faber, 2011]

Daggers

[Martin Bennitt]

saw this book in Smug's in Paris the other day. I've read the first two of the Jim Stringer series and found them fun to read, well-narrated and apparently quite well-researched. Think I'll wait for

the paperback, though

cheers Martin B

[Andrew Hesketh]

It's sitting in front of me. But then, so is a pile of other sruff. Can anyone advise whether this should rise or fall within the pile?

[auchonvillerssomme]

I enjoyed it for what it is, a novel but that being said he has researched and obviously read up on the era. I read his previous before this one and again they are ok, not brilliant but not the worst. I enjoyed the Railway detective novels of Edward Marston better.

[john w.]

I am just reading this on my e-reader

I too read the first two Jim Stringer novels and found them good and fun to read

Id go with it

John