The Blackpool Highflyer

A superbly atmospheric thriller of sabotage, suspicion and steam, The Blackpool Highflyer brings a new twist to tales of Edwardian England and amateur sleuthing. Assigned to drive holidaymakers to the seaside resort of Blackpool in the hot summer of 1905, Jim Stringer is happy to have left behind the grime and danger of life in London. But his dreams of beer and pretty women are soon shattered - when his high-speed train meets a huge millstone on the line.

"'Genuinely gripping... A brilliant evocation of Edwardian working-class life - the sort of thing D.H. Lawrence might have written had he been less verbose or been blessed with a sense of humour.' Peter Parker, Evening Standard 'Evokes Edwardian Yorkshire and Lancashire, their great industrial prosperity and singular ways of living, quite brilliantly in a historical whodunnit which for its fresh and stealthy approach to past times deserves the adjective Bainbridgean.' Ian Jack, Guardian (Books of the Year) 'A steamy whodunnit... This may well be the best fiction about the railways since Dickens.' Michael Williams, Independent on Sunday 'Unique and important... There is no one else who is writing like Andrew Martin today.' Ian Marchant, Guardian"

Andrew Martin, a former Spectator Young Writer of the Year, grew up in Yorkshire. After qualifying as a barrister he became a freelance journalist in which capacity he has tended to write about the north, class, trains, seaside towns and eccentric individuals rather than the doings of the famous, although he did once loop the loop in a biplane with Gary Numan. He has also learned to drive steam locomotives, albeit under very close supervision. He has written for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday and Granta, among many other publications, and his weekly column appears in the New Statesman.

A superbly atmospheric thriller of sabotage, suspicion and steam, The Blackpool Highflyer brings a new twist to tales of Edwardian England and amateur sleuthing. Assigned to drive holidaymakers to the seaside resort of Blackpool in the hot summer of 1905, Jim Stringer is happy to have left behind the grime and danger of life in London. But his dreams of beer and pretty women are soon shattered - when his high-speed train meets a huge millstone on the line.

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