The Railway Viaduct – Edward Marston

1852. As a train on its way from Manchester to Liverpool rumbles over the Sankey viaduct, a figure falls from a carriage into the canal below. It is a long way down, but the man was dead before he hit the water, as evidenced by the stab wound in his back.

It is clearly a job for Inspector Robert Colbeck, the ‘railway detective’ - a soubriquet earned in book one of the series (this is book two) by bringing some violent train robbers to justice. He is a bit of a dandy but with formidable (if rather intuitive) detection powers, single but semi attached to the dependable Madeline Andrews whom he rescued in book one and now seems unwilling to let go. Colbeck works out of Scotland Yard, but his specialist knowledge means he is called in when the crime has connections to the new but booming industry.

Back to the case. Aided by Sergeant Victor Leeming (who loathes trains as much as Colbeck loves them) and hamstrung by his stick-in-the-mud boss, Superintendent Tallis, Colbeck intuits, due to the profession and nationality of the victim, that the key to the crime lies in France. So he hops across the channel to where a British industrialist Thomas Brassey’s attempt to build a new railway line for the French government is suffering from a rash of sabotage. Could the murder of his engineer be part of that, or is there some motive in the Frenchman’s personal life?

Colbeck works his way through the case. The plot, characters, and settings in Victorian London and a navvy camp in Second Empire France, work well enough. But the prose, possibly to reflect the period, is stilted, heavy on dialogue and light on atmosphere. So, no work of art but a decent story that simmers along to its neat and tidy conclusion. Easy if unrewarding fare.

North Woods – Daniel Mason

The place, and it’s all about the place, is found first by illicit lovers fleeing their fledgling puritan community in New England. It is remote, to the north (obviously) and in the woods (ditto). It is well off the beaten track then; and remains so for the next 400 years.

A succession of ‘owners’, some legal and others mere squatters, provides the subsequent episodic narrative. Early bloody struggles set the tone but then follows a period of calm as a veteran of the French and Indian wars sets up a commercial apple orchard (though the sweet tasting variety he discovers has sinister origins). His daughters remain after his demise in the War of Independence, and their antics echo down the years.

No more spoilers. Suffice it to say that each episode delights (or horrifies) and adds to the place’s spooky aura that lies heavy over would-be residents.

The style varies by episode reflecting the life and times. Third-person narratives are mixed with some first-person testimony, including newspaper reports, letters, and a psychologist’s case notes. There are even ballads in the voices of the dead daughters making light of unsavoury events.

It is a bit of a mishmash but none the worse for that. A smorgasbord of styles, events, and characters that work pretty well together. The passage of time and effects on the landscape and natural world are particularly well done. The location of the yellow house and its grounds in the north woods is, at the end of the day, the main character.

An unusual book that makes for a rewarding read.

All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr

August 1944, two months after D-Day, but the Germans hold onto Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast. They, and the French inhabitants, brace themselves for the coming Allied bombardment. Eighteen-year-old Werner Pfennig is holed up with his unit in a hotel. Close by, in a seafront apartment block, is sixteen-year-old Marie-Laure LeBlanc, blind and alone.

The perilous hours that follow are interspersed with their respective narratives, beginning in 1934 when Werner is in an orphanage in Germany destined for a working life down a coal mine, and Marie-Laure is coming to terms with her blindness in Paris, where her father is a curator / locksmith at the natural history museum. Even then they have a tenuous connection neither is aware of - Werner repairs a discarded radio and listens in secret to a Frenchman broadcasting scientific lectures; that radio ham lecturer is Marie-Laure’s great uncle in Saint-Malo. That connection will prove crucial ten years later.

Werner, inspired by the broadcasts, develops a precocious talent in radio communication that saves him from the pit but propels him early into Second World War combat. The war affects Marie-Laure too as she flees soon-to-be occupied Paris with the father, ending up in Saint-Malo. Their trajectories converge to dramatic effect, but only after they each experience trials and tribulations, losses and minor victories, which shape these formative years.

The lead characters demand empathy so we root for them. The more minor characters too, are well fleshed out and satisfyingly complex. The toxicity of the Nazi regime is portrayed but not overtly judged; the realities of sightlessness are laid bare but without mawkishness.

Overall, a very good read.