Murder at Deviation Junction by Andrew Martin

Jim Stringer is a railway detective, working out of York Station in 1909. It is just coming up to Christmas and the setting is a striking mix of the dark satanic mills, fire and brimstone connected with the Industrial Age, and snow.
    Jim has been sent to arrest a steel worker for assault at a football game, but somehow ends up discovering a murder instead. The contrast between the steel works and the snow drift that brings his train to a stop at a tiny station couldn't be more obvious. When a derelict shed is searched by the snow clearing gang, a long dead body turns up.
    Railway reporter, Stephen Bowman, who is sharing Jim's carriage looks distinctly uneasy - a young photographer named Peters had disappeared a year before, and it turns out his camera was stolen about the same time. Had Peters uncovered an incriminating secret that led to his death?
    Jim runs the risk of dismissal by pursuing the murder case, but he can't let it go. He has his interview for the position of sergeant coming up, and his young family needs the money a promotion would bring. But Sergeant Shillito has other ideas and would like to take Jim down a peg or too. Then there's Christmas to pay for and Jim's small pocketful of cash is slowly depleted as he hops on and off trains, sends cables and stands witnesses for meals and drinks.
    Jim's under a lot of pressure as his investigations lead him to uncover the story of the Cleveland Travelling Club - a group of five prosperous men who journeyed daily from Whitby to Middlesbrough in their own special carriage. It's not long before he finds that young Peters isn't the only mysterious death, several of the club members have died in odd circumstances as well.
    The case will take Jim as far south as London and into the wintry north of the Scottish Highlands, and all the while the clock is ticking towards Christmas and all the pressure of his interview and family commitments. There's going to be plenty of danger and Jim will have the chance to put his railway knowledge and skills as a fireman to good use.
    You don't have to know a thing about steam trains to enjoy the Jim Stringer series. Andrew Martin recreates the steam age, coloured with the voice of the Yorkshire working classes, making these books delightfully different. There is brilliant characterisation - Jim's fellow detectives add some lively banter as does Lydia, Jim's sparky wife who has feminist ambitions. While there is plenty of action, there is also wit and social awareness, making the books a reasonably intelligent read and as such all the more satisfying.

 

The Sacred River by Wendy Wallace

The Sacred River is Wallace's second novel following her immensely poignant and engrossing debut, The Painted Bridge, which took you into the heart of a Victorian mental asylum. It wasn't your typical Victorian mental asylum story though, with plenty of curious twists for the reader and an ending full of promise.
    The Sacred River puts a similarly positive spin on what seems a grim beginning, this time with the possibility of imminent death. Three women take themselves out of a wintry London fog to Egypt on the recommendation of young Harriet Heron's doctor. Ongoing asthma attacks have made her a permanent invalid at the age of 23, but she hopes to see something of life before she dies.
    A self-educated girl with a fascination for ancient Egyptian culture and hieroglyphics, Harriet persuades her doctor to recommend a sojourn in Alexandria. Her father's bank conveniently has a house there. Her mother, Louisa, is nervous of the idea, but a visit to a spiritualist convinces her that death is nigh, and she is determined to make the trip happen. She's a flighty woman, famous for her beauty, but not so good on practical matters - although she does pop a gun in the bottom of her trunk. The reader knows that this gun is going to surface at some stage later in the story.
    Meanwhile, her husband arranges for his no-nonsense sister, Yael, to go with them. She's very reluctant as she has her good works to attend to and the responsibility of caring for her elderly father, but eventually she gives in.
    On the journey Harriet meets Mrs Cox, newly married, and a dab hand with the tarot cards. Mrs Cox tells Harriet that she will meet her future husband on the boat and that she will have several children. The only eligible man in sight is Eyre Soane, a painter of landscapes, whose famous father once painted Louisa as a girl. There is clearly going to be journey into the past, and old scores to be settled.
    Fortunately Egypt has a revivifying effect on Harriet, giving her the courage to imagine a future. The arrival of a fierce wind set to last for weeks drives Harriet and her mother to Luxor, where Harriet gets absorbed in the ancient sites at Thebes. She meets the German archaeologist, Dr Woolfe, and helps at the dig Woolfe is working on by making drawings of hieroglyphs.
   Meanwhile Aunt Yael finds a purpose in life she has never felt before, starting a clinic to help the poor children of Alexandria, many of whom seem to be afflicted by eye infections.
    The book is on the one hand a story of self-discovery for three women as well as being a wonderfully engaging novel full of drama, romance, secret shame and vendetta. In the background the natives are restless, and violence lurks around the corner. The insight from Harriet's translation of ancient Egyptian symbols is intriguing and gives the book an extra dimension. The writing is excellent too - it is hard to imagine anything else that would make this book better - one of my top reads for the year.

Legacy of the Dead by Charles Todd

It always helps move a mystery story along when the investigator has a side-kick to talk to about the case. Holmes has Watson, Poirot has Captain Hastings, Richard Jury has Melrose Plant.
    Charles Todd's Inspector Rutledge series is no different. This Scotland Yard detective is a veteran of the First World war; haunted by his experiences in more ways than one. He had to deliver the coup de grace following the execution of Hamish McLeod, his friend and fellow officer who refused to lead his men over the top again into likely death. While Rutledge distinguished himself in battle he carries the dreadful guilt from that day on the battlefield, as well as Hamish's ghostly presence inside his head.
    The two create some interesting dialogue - Hamish's Scottish voice is quite distinctive from Rutledge's, and he never holds back when it comes to airing his viewpoint. He is particularly present in this Legacy of the Dead. Bones have been discovered on a remote Scottish hillside belonging to a woman the age and size of an Eleanor Gray who may have disappeared two years before on a visit to Scotland. Her mother, the redoubtable Lady Maud insists that Rutledge finds out what happened to her.
    Rutledge is reluctant to visit Scotland as this is likely to make Hamish more vociferous than ever. For this reason he has been avoiding visiting his godfather near Edinburgh, David Trevor, whose son was Rutledge's boyhood friend, also killed in the war. Things are made more complicated when a series of anonymous letters in the town of Duncarrick, lead to the arrest of a young woman, accused of murdering Eleanor Gray and stealing her baby. The local policeman asks Rutledge to help prove her innocence.
    Fiona McDonald refuses to say anything in her defence about where her son, Ian, might have come from. When Rutledge visits her in the Duncarrick police station, it is clear from Hamish's reaction inside his head, that this Fiona is none other than Hamish's fiancé from before the war. Rutledge vows to clear her name, in spite of Fiona's fears that to do so will put little Ian in harm's way.
    It's a complex mystery, with lots of red herrings and a slow burning plot where clues are carefully assembled, before building to a thrilling climax where Rutledge gets to put into practice a trick with a knife he learned from the Scots troops under his command. Crucial to the storyline is the ongoing effect of the war on the disrupted lives of those left behind.
    Rutledge is an intuitive detective, who annoys his superiors and because his mind is so messed up, he's one of those sympathetic loners that fiction is so fond of. The Rutledge series is a collection of classic whodunits that are loaded with atmosphere, wonderful characters and plenty of suspense - perfect rainy weekend reading.

The Lewis Man by Peter May

I am not sure why I put off reading this, the second in Peter May's Lewis trilogy that began with the superb novel, The Blackhouse. Perhaps I thought there couldn't be anything else that you could throw at its main character, Fin McLeod, without stretching the bounds of probability. But I needn't have worried, this is every bit as terrific - with Fin looking into a cold case, not as a policeman but as a friend of the prime suspect.
     It all begins when the body of a young man is found in a peat bog on the Hebridean island of Lewis. An archeologist is called in as people assume it to be hundreds of years old and might bring some fame to the island as a historical find, hence the title.
    But a tattoo on the corpse's forearm depicts Elvis Presley and suddenly the police are looking into a murder from the late 1950s. A DNA match connects the body with an elderly man on the island, who just happens to be Mr McDonald, Marsaili's father. (If you remember from The Blackhouse, Marsaili was Fin's childhood sweetheart.)
    Woven in with the story of Fin's return to Lewis and his plan to rebuild the old family house, is that of Tormod McDonald. The sons of a seaman killed in the war, John, as he was then, and his brother were sent to an orphanage in Edinburgh at the death of their mother. Little brother Peter has been rendered 'simple' following a brain injury as a small boy. John has promised his dying mother that he will always look after his brother, but the reader knows that Peter is probably going to turn out to be the Lewis Man, and so it would seem that fate has intervened. From what we already know of Mr McDonald, this is likely to have haunted him the rest of his life.
   Now suffering from dementia and living in a nursing home, the past creeps back slowly into his consciousness, while Fin and and local policeman, George Gunn, try to discover what really happened. Fin wants to prove Mr McDonald's innocence before a cold case team from the mainland descends on the island and treat the old man as their prime suspect. Their investigations will lead them south to Harris, over the water to Edinburgh and to Charlie's beach on Eriskay. There will be parish records and cemeteries to peruse.
   Peter May creates a vivid contrast between the big city and remoter corners of Scotland, with wind blowing the tussocky grasses, big open skies and distant horizons. There's not a lot of money about and even less in his evocation of John's 1950's childhood and the harsh treatment of orphaned children. His depiction of dementia, particularly how the past merges with the present to create a different reality for Mr McDonald, is sensitively done. Fin's awkwardness with Marsaili and her son continue to add an interesting dimension to the series. Whether there can be any future in these relationships will have to wait for the last book in the series, The Chessmen.
 

A Half Forgotten Song by Katherine Webb

I started out thinking A Half Forgotten Song had all the hallmarks of a very engaging read, idea for a wet weekend, and I would finish it in no time.
    To begin with, Zach is such a sympathetic character. He is recently divorced, and his ex-wife and little girl are leaving England to live in Boston with the ex's new man. His art gallery is struggling, and the publisher who commissioned him to write a biography of British master, Charles Aubrey, is on his case to finish the book, or they'll pass the job onto someone else.
    So Zach is a guy under a lot of pressure. But in a burst of optimism, he packs a bag and heads off to the bucolic town of Blacknowle on the Dorset coast, where Aubrey did some of his best work. One of his models, Mitzy Hatcher, still lives here and Zach thinks she might know the origins of some Aubrey drawings that have come up for sale. Mysteriously titled 'Dennis', they don't fit with any other Aubrey work of the time.
    Mitzy is an emotionally fragile woman in her eighties, with a gypsy heritage, still living in the isolated cottage where she grew up. She gradually lets Zach talk to her. Mixed in with Zach's narrative, is the story of Mitzy's early life, when she got to know the Aubreys and fell under the spell of the charismatic artist.
    She's had a terrible time of it, scorned by the locals for being what she is, the daughter of the local witch/prostitute and destined for a similar career. But the Aubreys - Charles,  his exotic French/Moroccan mistress, and two daughters, Elodie and Delphine, Mitzy's special friend - are kind and make her part of the family. Charles in particular focuses a lot of attention on Mitzy, who has a simple, unadulterated beauty that fascinates him - he draws her at every opportunity - but this attention has dangerous consequences.
    It turns out that Mitzy harbours some terrible secrets, more than one or two, and Zach's ferreting leads him to meet another mysterious woman - Hannah, who lives at the neighbouring farm. The two are obviously attracted to one another, but Hannah, while defensive about Mitzy, has a few secrets of her own and is prickly when questioned.
   There seem to be just too many secrets lurking in the plot - even Zach's grandma has one up her sleeve. And I probably wouldn't have minded half so much, if such a lot of the narration wasn't from Mitzy's point of view. Her obsessive love for Charles gets every bit as tedious for the reader as it does for the Aubreys, and in spite of her tough time at home, she never really engaged my sympathy.
    This is a pity, as I'd really enjoyed Webb's earlier book, The Unseen and had hoped for a similar reading experience. Perhaps if the book had been a little shorter, the plot moved on a little more briskly, A Half Forgotten Song would have avoided sinking into melodrama and been a far more palatable novel.

Mouse and the Cossacks by Paul Wilson

Mouse and the Cossacks begins with a young girl and her mother moving into a remote farmhouse on the outskirts of Manchester. There is a sense that they are escaping, and one can only guess at the traumatic experience that has brought them here, because the first thing we find out about young Mouse, is that she cannot speak.
    Little by little we learn about another escape and the ensuing car accident which killed Mouse's high-achieving brother, Max. Although this isn't the reason that Mouse is unable to talk, that started some years before, the grief that surrounds the family make her likelihood of recovery even more unlikely.
    While her mother promises to think about a return to work and a new school for Mouse, the two remain at home, Mouse learning to cook and garden in an effort at routine and regular meals. She's a fighter, taking on her mother's grief as well as her own and the terrible guilt they both struggle with.
    When Mouse discovers a cache of unposted letters and memorabilia belonging to William Crosby, the owner of their house, another story emerges. William was an army officer at the end of World War Two, tasked with managing the influx into Austria of Cossack refugees. He falls in love with Anna, their interpreter, and is optimistic that in the reorganisation of Europe there will be for the Cossacks a permanent home. Churchill has promised to look after them, hasn't he, and William hopes to build his future around Anna.
     As history tells us, Churchill was tied by promises to Stalin at Yalta, and the Cossacks were forced to return to the USSR, facing execution or labour camps. Either way, many of them died. William, caught up in the middle of these events as a young man, has to do things he will always feel guilty about, while losing his one real chance at happiness. The resulting guilt and bitterness dominate the rest of his life.
    While things don't look too good for William, now dying in hospital, things must surely get better for Mouse, who puts so much energy into trying to fix things. She emails William's family to find out what to do about the letters; she sends text messages to her friend Lucas, inventing elaborate reasons why he cannot visit their house. Although she is sent to 'speech therapy', help comes from a different quarter, when she whimsically texts a random number, and unexpectedly receives a reply from a sympathetic voice telling her about a 'forgiveness machine'.
    Paul Wilson carefully treads a path around his themes of guilt, forgiveness and redemption to create a thoughtful novel with richly observed characters and a sad reminder about the plight of the Cossacks. Mouse as narrator is a wonderfully engaging character, as children dealing with issues way beyond their years can sometimes be. I enjoyed the book immensely and will be placing this writer on my watch list.