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Juridisk navn: Miles, Keith
Andre navne: Inigo, Martin
Allen, Conrad
Marston, A.E.
Garland, David
Mountjoy, Christopher
Marston, Edward
Fødselsdato: 1940
Køn: male
Nationalitet: UK
Fødested: Wales, UK
Bopæl: Wales, UK
Kent, England, UK
Uddannelse: Oxford University (Modern History)
Erhverv: novelist
Relationer: Cutler, Judith (wife)
Organisationer: Crime Writers Association
Kort biografi: Keith Miles, aka Edward Marston and Martin Inigo, came from Wales to read Modern History at Oxford. He has been a university lecturer, radio, television, and theatre dramatist, and in addition to writing has worked as an actor, director, and dramatist. He is the author of two mystery series, one Elizabethan in background, the other revolving around the Domesday census of 1086 A.D., and has written mysteries with golf and sports backgrounds under his real name as well as Murder in Prespective, 1997. His Elizabethan novel, The Roaring Boy, was a 1996 Edgar Allan Poe Award nominee for Best Novel. The author is a well known host and raconteur at mystery events and is the 1997 Chairman of the Crime Writers Association. When not travelling or fulfilling speaking engagements, he lives in rural isolation in Kent.
Oplysning om flertydighed: aka Conrad Allen, Martin Inigo, Keith Miles, A.E. Marston

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Anmeldelser

The Stationmaster's Farewell: The bestselling… af Edward (R09) Marston

This is the ninth book in the Railway Detective series set in the 1850s. A very popular local stationmaster in Exeter, Joel Heygate, disappears and his charred body is found at the base of a Guy Fawkes Day fire when it burns out. A number of people have obvious motives, including a local criminal who had sworn vengeance against him, the victim's own estranged brother, and Joel's own successor as stationmaster who had been a rival for the position when Joel was appointed. The eventual culprit and their motive turns out to be completely unexpected, and could not be worked out by any reader in advance as new factors are introduced near the end of the plot. There is also an amusing sub-plot where Inspector Colbeck's future widowed father in law Caleb Andrews is pursued by two rival widowed sisters. At the end of the story Colbeck and Madeleine are married at last. I enjoyed the story as usual, though I felt the resolution of the plot was a bit of a cheat.… (mere)

Markeret

john257hopper | 3 andre anmeldelser | Jan 11, 2024 |

Danger of Defeat: The compelling WWI murder mystery… af Edward Marston

A spate of robberies in jewellery shops in London ends when an officer is shot. Charged with investigating, the case is personal for Marmion as the shot officer is his daughter's fiancee. The evidence points to a gang of Irish Nationalists who seem to be led by a retired actress. However one of the gang is keen to silence the officer permanently so it is a race against time to find them whilst war rages in France.
I hadn't read any of the other books in the series but that didn't seem to matter as I slipped into the characters easily. I really liked the setting in the London police during World War 1, the book is well-researched and evocative. Essentially it is just a police procedural with a twist, but it is a solid one.… (mere)

Markeret

pluckedhighbrow | Nov 13, 2023 |

Points of Danger (Railway Detective, 16) af Edward Marston

One of those books where I could excuse the weak points if the finale impressed. And it... was pretty poor. Very very rushed and the explanation of the crime felt unearned from an emotional, logical and in story detective work standpoint.

The book has 2 subplots running in parallel to the main one and having pretty much no connection - as well as solving the murder, there's the detective's superintendent dealing with what seems to be PTSD and the detective's artist wife getting a commission for a painting. Both kind of fluff out - the latter at least gets a conclusion although it includes a strange sequel hook but the former mostly consists of everyone being worried about him spacing out a lot and it seems the author otherwise doesn't really know how to handle it - it ends with him returning to one of the sites where he got kidnapped and almost murdered and then just... being ok? what? and that's the end of the plot? because that helped him come to terms with it? after him basically not opening up before? i don't know. The ending of the art plot is also kind of hilariously weird - so someone wants to commission her and there's some investigation because people feel suspicious for some reason well the ending is he only supports women artists? and a bunch of them live in a house he owns or something? and it's implied he treats them like a... harem??? or something??? it's not actually clear at all what's going on

The writing is... competent. A lot of the characters are pretty empty - having 1 or 2 obvious traits at best - which is frustrating especially when the *main character* is maybe the worst at this! We obviously spend the most time with him yet we never really get a hint of any emotion, any particular desires. He never shows any sign of being the exceptional detective people say he is either. He's just... totally empty. At least we know his sidekick loves beer, if nothing else. The other character who feels pretty empty is the murder victim. Sure, we get some descriptions about how great and powerful he was and yet... it really doesn't add up to much. Especially when the ending appears to entirely contradict the imperious nature that's the only real personality trait he's given. The bland characters really shows up in the dialogue too - I can't say it's *wooden* but there's never any sparkle and only rarely does it really convey emotion above retelling of facts. There's also the occasional tendency to just sprinkle in weird "facts I learned about Norwich and railways from wikipedia" that don't really fit. There's a genuinely laughable part where the detective's father-in-law's main trait is that the only railway he likes is the LNWR and so he gets really mad at the idea of his daughter painting a GWR locomotive for some reason and this fuels a significant amount of sideplot drama! It's just not how any human acts.

The main plot suffers badly from having minimal clues happening for most of the book. You could *guess* at the ending, but there's not really much that hints at it. A lot of it feels padded then you're 20 pages from the end and it suddenly kicks into extremely rushed mode without any time to justify what's happening and without wrapping up the other character plots that it had spent a lot of time on. There's a lot to say about this that I can't do without spoilers so obviously this will spoil the end completely

There's 2 people who are actually identified as suspects who we spend a lot of time with, the victim's son and another rich railway involved man. The son is given the priority - he's weirdly cold, clearly concerned most of all with instantly taking over from his dad as MP. The other guy also wants to be MP and a big part of the plot is their drama with each wanting to be nominated by the Tories to become MP. And then at the end it turns out neither of them were involved, we don't get an explanation for any of the son's callous behaviour even though it turns out he was right about the stepmum, and we don't get any kind of conclusion on the MP affair. It feels cheap. It turns out basically all the story we've had in the main plot has been a red herring. It's not even ever shown if either of them had any motive but the plot keeps following them.

It was actually the victim's wife who did it with her "brother" who was actually her lover - he'd hired a murderer from their home island of Jersey who did it and someone paid off the railway policeman to change the points. I can't say there's a single thing in the book which points to this before you find it out. There appears to be very minimal evidence for it even at the end of the book! Before the mad dash of the last 20-30 pages the only thing that could even be said to suggest it is that apparently the victim had been seen sleeping with a sex worker. How does that suggest it? Well apparently the wife was manipulating him by... not having sex with him. And she made him change the will to favour her by saying she'd then have sex with him??? If I understood that part right? So obviously he'd sleep around. Despite the only thing we know about the victim being his imperious attitude and general strength and with-it-ness, he was apparently conned into marrying her when she'd planned all along to eventually kill him and go off with her lover. The thing is, we spend lots of time with her during the book but it's mostly about how hard things are for her and how great her husband was. There's nothing hinting at it or that makes the about face feel earned. It's true she makes an obvious suspect as inheritance is a common motive but that just makes it more frustrating that the reveal at the end isn't earned by investigation - the whole plot is misdirection and red herrings. Early on you're given an explicit scene of the railway policeman involved being dodgy - he claims he was distracted by someone firing a stone from a catapult at his head. He even shows the stone! Except there's no blood on it and he wasn't hurt. This obvious clue, that the detectives explicitly notice, is then ignored.

There's some stuff about the murder that doesn't make much sense, too. How did the two communicate? How did the railway policeman get in on the plan when the man murderer appears to have been in Jersey the whole time? What was going on with the house in Jersey - how did he get the money to rent it, how did he keep it in use as his address? And what's with the bizarre Count Olafian claim that he convinced the victim he owned the house and had a big family there by - I am not making this up - HAVING HIS THEATRE TROUPE PRETEND TO BE HIS FAMILY!! And how on earth did nobody catch on!! The evidence the detective has gathered feels fragile and even with the ending stuff there's no sign at all of how he worked *everything* he says out.

There's also the red herring of a different dodgy railway policeman working with other people to try and solve the murder to get reward money. He has no motive at all but we're treated to many scenes of him acting very suspicious. And then at the end he just gets sent to jail on the basis of having an accomplice following the policemen to try and get ahead of his investigation. It's pretty poor and another pointless piece of misdirection

I kept going through the book and feeling like it was competent enough and I was curious enough to wonder how it would end but it just left a bad taste. Nothing in the book was insultingly bad or anything and it's very readable, hence the 2 stars rather than 1, there's just not much to recommend about it. Just disappointing.

PS as someone who loves trains I felt there were not enough trains in this book. Needs more trains.… (mere)

Markeret

tombomp | 1 anden anmeldelse | Oct 31, 2023 |

The railway detective af Edward Marston

On the plus side, it's a detective story, set in the early days of both the Railways and the Detective Section of the Met Police. The author seems to have done his research, such as having the detective arrive by train into Birmingham at (then correct) Curzon Street, rather than New Street or Moor Street (the current two most frequently used train stations between London and Birmingham).

On the negative side: It read like the author's first novel, which apparently it isnt. The book is riddled with stereotypes: the Irish ex-policeman kicked out the force for drunken fighting who makes his living as a bouncer in a rough pub; the slightly dim-witted and subserviant sidekick; the head of the detective division being harassed by the press and causing friction with his detectives by stopping them doing what they want to do; the well dressed detective who likes bending the rules almost to breaking point.

On the whole, a decent read, but I'm not sure that I'd continue with the series… (mere)

Markeret

nordie | 29 andre anmeldelser | Oct 14, 2023 |

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