L'espresso per Blackpool

Jim Stringer #2

by Andrew Martin, Seba Pezzani (Translator)

A Halifax, un sobborgo industriale come ce ne sono tanti nel Lancashire, spesso il fumo e il cielo sono tutt'uno. Non è così, però, oggi, in questo giorno terso del 1905, un giorno che Jim Stringer, fuochista dell'espresso per Blackpool, «treno speciale» con cinquecentododici anime della fabbrica Hind in gita di Pentecoste, non scorderà facilmente.Tutto è cominciato quando Clive Carter, il suo collega macchinista, ha avvistato un enorme masso in mezzo ai binari, a circa centocinquanta metri dalla locomotiva. Per evitare il catastrofico impatto, Clive ha dapprima azionato i freni, poi ha tirato la leva della retromarcia.L'Highflyer, la motrice di sessanta tonnellate, un bestione nero tirato a lucido con la caldaia alta, i cerchioni alti, la velocità alta, è decollata come un fuscello, le quattro ruote frontali deragliate, il paraurti piegato da una macina di mulino di un metro e venti di diametro. Coi loro abiti della domenica, le pagliette e i cappelli, alcuni gitanti non hanno esitato a lanciarsi giù dal treno e a riversarsi sui prati. La maggior parte, però, non si è mossa da dov'era. Con le loro coccarde della fabbrica Hind orgogliosamente appuntate al petto, i passeggeri poltrivano addirittura o suonavano l'armonica.Jim Stringer ha cominciato allora a perlustrare le carrozze e ad arrampicarsi negli scompartimenti. È stato così che ha scorto, a un certo punto, una donna sdraiata su un fianco sopra alcuni sedili. Era bellissima, aveva gli occhi verdi e i capelli biondi e sembrava non un'operaia di fabbrica ma una fatina in uno spettacolo per bambini. Mentre Jim la guardava, però, lei ha mosso leggermente la testa e dalla sua bocca è uscito un rigurgito di vomito rosa che si è riversato sulla tela rossa del sedile. Poi i suoi bulbi oculari si sono girati su se stessi ed è diventata bianca come la cera...Meraviglioso romanzo storico, in cui in ogni pagina si schiude davanti agli occhi del lettore l'Inghilterra degli inizi del secolo scorso, con le sue locomotive nere luccicanti, le fabbriche immense, i mulini con centinaia di operai, i paesaggi verdi della campagna che arriva al mare, il porto con le navi che vanno verso il Continente, i pub, le birre, i socialisti, gli anarchici, i rivoluzionari, L'Espresso per Blackpool ha rivelato sulla scena internazionale un nuovo grande talento della narrativa contemporanea inglese.

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Railways, Trains

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Andrew Martin (born 6 July 1962) is an English novelist and journalist.

Martin was brought up in Yorkshire, studied at the University of Oxford and qualified as a barrister. He has since worked as a freelance journalist for a number of publications while writing novels, starting with Bilton, a comic novel about journalists, and The Bobby Dazzlers, a comic novel set in the North of England, for which he was named Spectator Young Writer of the Year. His series of detective novels about Jim Stringer, a railwayman reassigned to the North Eastern Railway Police in Edwardian England, includes The Necropolis Railway, The Blackpool Highflyer, The Lost Luggage Porter, Murder at Deviation Junction and Death on a Branch Line. He has also written the non-fiction book; How to Get Things Really Flat: A Man's Guide to Ironing, Dusting and Other Household Arts.

Reviews

[Gerry · Rating 2 out of 5]

The hustle and bustle of Wakes week in a Yorkshire mill town abounds throughout the book and the action switches from Halifax to Blackpool, occasionally, Hebden Bridge and Southport. The plot is well defined although on working a way to a conclusion it is sometimes a laborious effort. Stringer, the 'steam detective' is in fact a railway fireman throughout the volume and he has the nasty habit, a bete noire of mine, of referring to his wife, Lydia, as 'the wife'. It appears hundreds of times and it grates every time I read it but not to take away from the storyline, it was an okay read.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the second in the series and Jim Stringer has moved from London to Halifax to work as a fire man for the 'Yorkshire and Lancashire Steam Company'. On an excursion to Blackpool the train that Jim is working on is suddenly halted in its tracks by a gritstone placed on the tracks ahead of it and a young woman loses her life. Jim sets out to discover who tried to wreck the train.

Once again I should point out that I live in the North, work on the trains there, often even to Blackpool, have a friend who lives in Sowerby Bridge so know the area quite well and enjoy reading about social history. The author paints a vivid picture of Halifax in 1905, the great weaving mills with their Wakes Weeks holidays to a Blackpool in its heyday, the music halls and pubs of the era and of course, the Edwardian steam railway. I found this all fascinating and compelling. In particular I found the description of the first trip on the steam-engine thrilling: could imagine the landmarks I know flashing by, the heat and sweat of stoking the firebox, the almost dance-like nature of keeping your balance on the footplate whilst the engine was barrelling along at full steam- I almost felt I was there with them.

Unfortunately the whodunit element of this book just didn't work for me. It just wasn't particularly gripping. Jim seems to do little in the way of 'detective work' but rather seems to spend the whole book dreaming up tenuous scenarios in which to to fit in each person. The authorities barely seemed to care who placed the gritstone on the track and I didn’t either.

Jim is a likeable character, an intelligent, working-class railwayman but I saw little in the way of character development from the first in the series. I have several more of these in my possession so I don't intend to give up on them totally but it may be a while before I get to the next in line.

[Gary · Rating 3 out of 5]

A gentle story set in 1905, on the Lancashire railway. A good insight into life at the time but it may be too gentle for non-Northerners. There is a strong nostalgia element to the book and the main protagonist, Jim Stringer, a Fireman on the engines is a quaint chap who has simple pleasures and a strong sense of what is right and wrong. The story is 'nice' but not exciting. It's got an easy feel to it but sometimes I was wondering if we would get to any action rather than just background info on all the various characters. It's innocuous and that's not meant to be too damning but it's no 'Girl with a Dragon Tattoo'.

[Johnny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although The Blackpool Highflyer has a near-lugubrious pace (rather ironic considering the title) where the actual mystery(ies) is (are) concerned, the novel would be poorer for picking up that pace. Part of the reason one enjoys historical fiction is to get a sense of the flavor of living in that era. And, while much historical fiction tends to focus on the upper class or that portion of the bourgeoisie on the cusp of moving up in society. Jim Stringer, railway fireman, and his new wife seem to be moving up from working toward middle class thanks to her business acumen (she served as landlady for her father’s property in the first novel) and her willingness to take on a job so that they become a dual-income (plus) family.

As the action opens, protagonist Jim Stringer has achieved his immediate goal (as per the first volume, The Necropolis Railway) of being promoted to fireman and is even regularly assigned to runs on prestige equipment (such as the eponymous Highflyer (sometimes listed in historical sources as High-Flyer and sometimes as 4-4-2 Class 7) locomotive built by John Aspinall). With prestige, though, sometimes comes a targeting reticle and Stringer soon wonders why the excursion train he was firing had been targeted by vandals (in those days called “wreckers”) and how to cope with the death associated with the vandalism for which he takes the blame.

I suppose it is that personal assumption of the blame that pulls Jim deeply into the quicklime of the mystery(ies). It doesn’t seem like Jim makes up his mind very often, but he is heavy on resolve when he perceives danger to innocent people. In this case, there are multiple innocents to be protected—including his lovely wife. So, Stringer rarely seems to let the situation leave his mind. Truthfully, I find this more interesting than the tales of professional investigators.

If I labeled the pace as unnecessarily slow earlier, please note that the leisurely reading allows one to savor a few choice lines. Some will think this description of the mill to be rather corny, but I translated the words into visual form quite readily. “…row upon row of crashing looms, each row under a drive shaft, all the looms connected to this shaft by rolling leather belts, so that the machinery on the floor was tangled in the machinery on the roof, as though a giant spider had climbed over everything making a web as it went.” (p. 157) It was very easy to visualize traversing a hot street in the following line: “My shadow reached and touched from time to time the boots of a tiring man in black plodding up the hill under a black bowler.” (p. 279) [Yes, I like the sentence even though it could be construed as the HILL being under the black bowler.] Toward the end of the novel, Stringer sees a port city he’d never seen before as it is illuminated by lightning. Even the coal hoists seem to be alive in this strange scene: “…the tall coal hoists like factories on legs that could roll back and forth, and one of them seemed to be walking through the port in that bright, white moment, …” (p. 312) and it couldn’t help but remind me of the folk legend that George Lucas’ idea for the “walkers” on Hoth originated when he saw the giant cranes at the Port of Oakland.

I also like the way Stringer is able to use some of the advertisements in the story for purposes of foreshadowing an emphasis, as well as providing atmosphere. The Blackpool Highflyer had me pulling out my reference books on trains and locomotives because Andrew Martin kept writing descriptions and references that formed mental notifications about aspects of my love of trains. I suppose that will keep me coming back to these novels in spite of some reservations about pacing and the focus of the plot. Overall, I rate this volume at two stars if you’re simply looking for a mystery, but four stars if you love early 20th century culture and trains. Hence, the rather average rating listed above.

[Chris Gillies · Rating 4 out of 5]

The funny thing about this book is that while I read it from e-cover to e-cover, I couldn't really tell you much about what happened in the book, aside from the event at the beginning that drives the plot, and the ending about finding the culprit. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, and it was easy to become immersed in a world over a century gone - close enough to picture it, far enough away for most of it to no longer be reality. Andrew Martin does a brilliant job of drawing the world in your mind, and for that reason I have rated this book highly. Where it loses a star is where it lost me - the storyline. The book is much like one of the more benign soaps on TV, where little happens and you only really read on because you have an interest in the lives of the main characters and their fleshing out, but in terms of the plot as a whole very little happens. I found this with the first book too, a very engaging read that left me scratching my head all the way through wondering what the point was, while at the same time being totally immersed in the book. Much of the context of the book doesn't seem to have much to do with the plot, but draws you in anyway.

In spite of all this, I'm definitely going to continue reading the series!!

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Martin really hits his stride in this second book in the Jim Stringer series. Fresh from his exploits on the Necropolis Railway running out of Waterloo, Stringer is now happily married to his ex-landlady, living in Halifax and promoted to the footplate as fireman on the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway. The Blackpool Highflyer is set in the long hot summer of 1905, and is centred around the near derailment of an excursion train taking mill workers from Halifax on a day trip to Blackpool, one of whom unfortunately meets her death as a result. What I love about these books is the complete immersion in another time and place they offer the reader. There’s an awful lot of historical crime published these days, but Martin’s railway detective books are of a very superior kind and immensely satisfying. His prose is a delight to read, occasionally spiky and wrong-footing the reader, and Jim Stringer is a complex but right-minded character, but what’s most impressive is his creation of a fully believable past world that that captures all of the reader’s senses to the point that it sometimes comes as a shock on putting the book down to find oneself on the other side of Yorkshire and over a century on.

[Avid Series Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blackpool Highflyer is the second book in the Jim Stringer Railway Mystery series set in Victorian England, summer of 1905. Jim is now a fireman on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, 'Lanky' for short among railway employees. He and his wife Lydia, his former landlord in London, now own their own home and they're saving up for home improvements. On Whitsuntide Jim and driver Clive Carter have the famous Highflyer train, capable of much more speed than most. Clive drives it too fast on an excursion run, and they hit an obstacle on the train track, stopping the train. One woman is concussed by the violent stop, and when Jim tries to lift her, she dies. Jim's pride and joy in driving a train are dimmed by the experience, and he spends the remainder of the book trying to find out who placed the obstacle on the track and why.

Jim is a likable protagonist. He's a straight arrow kind of guy, who is uncomfortable when he finds out how good friends and acquaintances are cheating the system. He loves and respects his wife a bit more it seems than most men of his time. He wasn't born into a life of privilege, and takes hard work in stride.

The plot is a little dull, its underlying conflict not compelling, and the story drags in the middle, but the railway jargon and minutiae of daily life are fascinating enough to continue reading. A wealth of detail gives the story historical authenticity whether or not it supports the plot, for example the cigar factory where Jim and George go to get 'A' or 'B' cigar 'seconds'. It is enjoyable enough reading to recommend the series, but is by no means a thriller, as a cover blurb attests.”

[Lizixer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty sure what Andrew Martin doesn't know about trains and trams isn't worth knowing.

Jim Stringer has come home to the North and is involved in a train accident as he takes a mill on a Whit week excursion to Blackpool. A woman dies and Jim is tormented by thoughts of how he could have done things differently as well as being unable to get the need to find out why it happened out of his head.

This is a fine book about an Edwardian mill town and also a hymn to the wonders of Northern seaside culture pre WW1. With its at times dreamlike evocations of events and an eye for historical detail, you do sometimes have to remind yourself that Andrew Martin isn't actually writing from memory, rather than from obviously painstaking research. The 'whodunnit' plot line isn't as important as his recreation of a working class life in the North Edwardian Britain. Plus I love how the Co-operative Women's Guild is featured heavily and how his wife describes herself as a socialist.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second in the Jim Stringer, railway detective, series and the one that shifts him back to his natural habitat of the North of England where he will stay for the next four books.

This is, in fact, a little superior to the much praised 'Necropolis Railway'[ https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ] - well written with plenty of red herrings to get ratiocinators going.

The main female character - Jim's wife - is no cypher but used to introduce a female perspective on life in 1905 with sensitivity and without the usual patronising ways of the retrospective liberal.

Jim often gets it wrong but is eternally inquisitive and she is strong and quite independent with flashes of insight that move the plot along. It is made to look like a genuine partnership.

The showy use of research has ended here. Martin has worked out the difference between 'literature' and entertainment without sacrificing the ability to write well.

[Robert Ditterich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting Edwardian period crime fiction, centred around the railway machines and systems that transformed village society, industry and even recreation. Although in many ways this is ' light reading' it is sociologically powerful and historically fascinating. Martin has created some wonderfully complex characters to follow through his series.

Crime and Railway fiction for people not focussed on crime or railways....but who could be tempted by the good stories.

[Mimi · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could have dealt with the slow pace, and the great amount of trains but a book where the protaganist keeps referring to his wife as "the wife" page after page.....no. I skipped to the back and still the "wife", if she's important enough to be a part of this tale, she's important to have her name used. It's a dumb convention and should not be allowed if you want to keep readers. Women are not complete ciphers....Stop doing this.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know next to nothing about steam trains, so at times I was a little perplexed by the technical jargon, as I was by most of the British cooloquialisms. Aside from that, I do like these Jim Stringer mysteries. The characters are well drawn, especially Stringer and "the wife" and the setting in pre-war (WWI) England, with it's class and caste conciousness is intriguing.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plus a half star. In my opinion the Jim Stringer books are seriously undervalued. People seem to read them as quaint historical detective mysteries and complain that they are not. Jim Stringer and his wife are two of my favourite people from the world of novels - it's their characters and that of others around them that provide the mystery and the author pulls the curtain far enough to make the reader satisfied that they know them, yet leaving so much of the human condition unexplained.

And yet the railways, stations, trains and towns are so vivid that they have stayed with me for years since the first reading - unlike many other books that were read and them forgotten.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book in the end but the first 150 pages were very slow going, so much so that I ended up putting the book down for months before finishing it. Andrew Martin is exceptionally good at giving very vivid accounts of people, places and setting which is something that really brings his books to life, there was just too much descriptive backstory in the beginning for me and not enough pace with the plot.

[Helen Hanschell Pollock · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a thriller at all. The last Andrew Martin railway novel I will read and kept with this one out of a sense of duty having started it. Bumbling and dare I say repetitive and boring. His first novel was better written and constructed and yet we do need more narratives about working men and women of whatever period. The world at the moment seems to revolve around destruction, division and the cult of celebrity. I want more thoughtful meat.

[Helen Birkbeck · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't really get into this as the plot didn't develop clearly and took a long time to get anywhere. I was never sure why the crimes happened! Too much technical detail for me too, and I dislike the way Jim calls Lydia 'the wife'!

I do like the descriptions of towns, especially Halifax here. They really make history come alive; shame about the plot and characters!

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Victorian or Edwardian railway mystery sees Jim Stringer living in Halifax with his wife now.

Superb description and great atmosphere plus a strong sense of life in the mill town and on the railway make reading this absorbing mystery worthwhile, interesting and a complete break from the everyday.

4-stars and, for me at least, a better read than its predecessor The Necropolis Railway.

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much talk and not enough actual action in this story. The author goes into lots of detail on each character and at times it comes alive with their portraiture but overall made it feel bogged down, like it wasn’t going anywhere. Not my cup of tea.

[Somnath Sengupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

The mystery or detective part of these books aren't that great but what works is author's eye for details & his ability to transport the user to Edwardian time. Many historical fiction writers fail in this task.

[Caitlan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seemed slower paced than the first in the series. The main character works on trains and many, many times he has to run to catch a train. Seems meticulously researched with a loving description of the layout of the stations he is running through.

[Sandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

difficult to follow

[Cindy]

Too much railway jargon and Britishisms for my taste. I was really disappointed in the plot and in the characters.

[David Kern · Rating 4 out of 5]

wacko!

Quite a book. I think the writer has spent at least a year in the hatch along with his hero and the Wife.

[Garth Pettersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engaging mystery with terrific world-building. Martin's research is thorough. I loved the early twentieth-century train vocab. I want to read the whole series.

[Dirck Lint · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cover blurb referring to "Jim Stringer, Steam Detective" is misleading as can be, but I find I prefer what I got to what the publisher's publicist is trying to offer. What we have is not a tale of a hard-boiled Noir-style detective to whom some brass gears have been applied and who does his business with a revolver in one hand and a DuBois Mark VIIb reciprocating framistatic kinetovectoriscope in the other (whatever one of those might be). Rather, this is an excellent slice-of-life story centered on entirely realistic fireman of a British railway in 1905.

There is a mystery of sorts, and he thinks he ought to try to solve it, but his efforts are guided by and frequently hampered by the sort of wishful thinking and seeking of complexity in a simple situation a lot of us pursue in an attempt to insert meaning into life. Jim Stringer is just a man with enough intelligence to be imaginative who is driven to the edge of paranoid delusion by a tragic coincidence he finds himself at the core of. I highly recommend it, not as detective fiction but as a historical novel.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first book of this author that I have read - and he has achieved quite a remarkable feat - This murder mystery, in the setting of the railway culture in northern Britain in 1905 speaks in the language of a working "fireman" (one who shovels the coal into the steam engines and thus propels the trains of Britain along. It is a strange voice with such different ways of seeing life that one believes it must be true of the time. Other characters are more or (in at least one case) less believable. The problem with this story - told as it is through the eyes of the protagonist (Jim Stringer) and in his somewhat awkward language is that it has so many twists and turns (as Jim sees it) that I had a lot of difficulty understanding when Jim moved on from one postulated bad guy to another. I rather hope the follow up stories are clearer in Jim's mind at least - so that I can follow it better. I will try one follow up book - because it is so novel a way of storytelling

[Henri Moreaux · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having previously read 'The Necropolis Railway' and enjoyed it when I saw this on the shelf of the hotel I was staying in I dived in.

Continuing on from the first book we're in Edwardian England; Jim Stringer has landed his woman, moved into a house and started on a new railway line where someone attempts to derail his train. Naturally, amateur sleuthing ensues.

One thing to note is whilst these books are not fast paced or action filled they are very detailed and atmospheric so its a bit of a departure from many other modern books which seem to be constantly action filled lest the reader gets bored and turns on the television.

Overall an excellent picturesque Edwardian mystery novel.

[Viki Holmes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I enjoyed this second book in the Jim Stringer series more than the first - no one writes Edwardian slang like Andrew Martin, and the narrative voice is so compelling - so much so that the (admittedly lightweight) storyline is largely irrelevant. Jim Stringer would quite probably be, in person, a crashing bore, obsessed as he is with detail, railways and the everyday, but somehow this makes for a hugely entertaining read. The era is evoked so naturally that reading these books really is like being transported back in time and place. Jim's wife is fantastic, and a brilliant foil. A goodhearted, fun read.

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a mystery novel, but of the sort where the main character is wrong about pretty much everything and just sort of blunders into the answer after exhausting every other possibility. Like a railroad train, the plot just keeps chug-chug-chugging along until it gets to the end, but it's not very satisfying. I don't remember the first book's perpetrator, but the one in this installment didn't make a whole lot of sense. I have to remember not to pick up the next book in this series when I'm at the library. At least it wasn't very long.

[Robert Hepple · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable thriller in which the main character is a fireman with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway in Edwardian times. The mystery element of the plot meanders a lot, and the main character gets his ideas from bizarre intuitive guesses with no concessions for logical methodology at all. Not surprisingly, the Police seem to have even less success with their step by step investigations. I found this a little hard to swallow, but enjoyed the period feel of the background and the incredible knowledge of early railway methods used towards so well by the author.