Cold Steel Rail

Cold Steel Rail
Inspector Vignole Mystery No 9
ISBN978-1-9164010-0-6
The Vignoles Press
352pp
 
ROMANTIC notions of a cosy white Christmas in December 1954 for the tight-knit community along a secluded railway branch line are brutally dashed by the actions of a satanic Santa whose deathly season’s greetings soon send a tragic shockwave into the wider world.
 
Already grappling with a sudden family tragedy, Inspector Charles Vignoles more than ever needs his trusty deputy, Sergeant Trinder, and their team in the British Railways Detective Department, to unravel a complicated murder mystery with repercussions involving a psychopathic duo whose attention no right-minded person would want to attract. Unfortunately, that’s just what a young single mother and her little daughter unwittingly do as the action speeds along the former Great Central Railway line from rural Leicestershire into the urban bustle of London, Liverpool and Manchester.   
 
It’s not only the poor rabbits in the surrounding East Midlands countryside, blighted by a savage outbreak of myxomatosis, who wait almost paralysed in fear of what the future holds . . .   
 
As always, Stephen Done creates a pitch-perfect background of the tough post-war years in which the warmth of community well-being jostles with the growing sense of social claustrophobia for equal billing - and steam power was still king of the rails. 
 
"Not just splendidly paced crime thrillers, not just delicious treats for all steam train enthusiasts but really vibrant social portraits of the life and mores of the immediate post war, Austerity Britain." 
Ewan Wilson, Crime Fiction Buyer, Waterstone’s 
 
‘The Best of the railway detectives on the market’ Steam Railway Magazine