The Ghost Train

by Ruth Alexander

Captain Edward Gascoigne Morrison, M. C., D. S. 0., formerly of His Majesty’s Welsh Fusiliers, but since his war service transferred to the Foreign Department of the Secret Service, looked round at the chaos of the shattered studio, and then at the figure of the girl who still sat, with the look of a frightened dove, crouched upon the model’s throne in the corner. There had been a struggle. The floor of the great room, skylighted by an immense dust-encrusted window in the roof, lay thick with smashed pieces of sculpture and white with trodden clay and plaster-of-Paris. One small window at the side of this studio, which was on the ground floor of a back street in Cologne, allowed the thin rays of a winter sun to look in as if enquiringly on the scene of devastation. A chair standing in a semi-crippled condition on three legs — the fourth had been wrenched off and lay at some distance from the rest of its body — and a pair of tom green velvet curtains that were huddled, still attached to pole and rings, before the model’s throne, added to the general wreckage.

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Ruth Alexander (1879-1958) was a British writer who undertook many early film novelizations, later turning to romantic fiction and travel writing.

Reviews

[Mark H · Rating 2 out of 5]

Based on Ridley’s hit play, this novelisation by Ruth Alexander does very, very little to convert this into a novel. It still has a three-act structure, it’s mostly dialogue, with the action restricted largely to three rooms!

The play was adapted many times into feature films, most famously the Arthur Askey comedy of 1941, and appears to have influenced the 1937 Will Hay classic Oh Mr Porter!

The novel is most successful in the third act, but the first two are interminable and repetitive - a very slow police investigation that undermines the supernatural potential of the closing act.

[Russell Stamets · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very entertaining read!