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The Crime in Car 13
Murder disrupts a reporter's train trip in this classic mystery from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, from the author of The House of the Two Green Eyes.
New York City reporter Hamlin Douglas has a knack for getting into trouble. When an assignment gets dangerous and his editor pushes him more, he loses his temper and is promptly placed on suspension. Making use of his new surplus of free time, Ham decides to escape the city for a few weeks of bass fishing upstate. But trouble soon finds him after he boards the Montreal-Adirondack Limited at Grand Central.
A ticket mix-up leads Ham to switch berths with a peculiar Englishman with two names, and one portfolio chained to his wrist. The next morning, the porter discovers the Englishman strangled to death in his berth and his portfolio has vanished. As a reporter, Ham can't help but be curious. Just who was the Englishman? Myron? Morepath? And the portfolio wasn't all that vanished. There was a seedy looking passenger on board who disappeared . . .
Suddenly Ham's trip to catch some bass turns into a hunt for a killer that's tangled up in international intrigue. It will be quite a story for the paper, if he survives.
Originally published in 1930.
New York City reporter Hamlin Douglas has a knack for getting into trouble. When an assignment gets dangerous and his editor pushes him more, he loses his temper and is promptly placed on suspension. Making use of his new surplus of free time, Ham decides to escape the city for a few weeks of bass fishing upstate. But trouble soon finds him after he boards the Montreal-Adirondack Limited at Grand Central.
A ticket mix-up leads Ham to switch berths with a peculiar Englishman with two names, and one portfolio chained to his wrist. The next morning, the porter discovers the Englishman strangled to death in his berth and his portfolio has vanished. As a reporter, Ham can't help but be curious. Just who was the Englishman? Myron? Morepath? And the portfolio wasn't all that vanished. There was a seedy looking passenger on board who disappeared . . .
Suddenly Ham's trip to catch some bass turns into a hunt for a killer that's tangled up in international intrigue. It will be quite a story for the paper, if he survives.
Originally published in 1930.
313 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 18, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 20, 2026
This thriller, originally published in 1930 (and thus entering public domain in the US in 2026), is set in 1913. Hamlin Douglas, a reporter for the New York Sphere, is suspended by his editor after a disagreement. He decides to spend his "time off" fishing in the Adirondacks. His holiday is soon interrupted, though, by the news that a man he had met on the train from New York City, British nobleman Lionel Morepath, was murdered on that train. Missing was a leather portfolio that had been attached to Morepath's wrist by a chain.
Sensing a story of international importance, Douglas joins the US Secret Service to aid in investigating the incident. Two passengers from that train, a Secret Service agent and a man with unusual eyes, are still unaccounted for. Presumably one of them is a thief and murderer. Aiding Douglas is fellow reporter Mary Agnes "Nan" Tuckett, who is in love with Douglas and would like him to survive the adventure so that he can figure that out.
This thriller holds up well after almost a century and provides an interesting window into the America of that era.
Sensing a story of international importance, Douglas joins the US Secret Service to aid in investigating the incident. Two passengers from that train, a Secret Service agent and a man with unusual eyes, are still unaccounted for. Presumably one of them is a thief and murderer. Aiding Douglas is fellow reporter Mary Agnes "Nan" Tuckett, who is in love with Douglas and would like him to survive the adventure so that he can figure that out.
This thriller holds up well after almost a century and provides an interesting window into the America of that era.
February 11, 2026
Pitched as a murder mystery, I would characterize it as more a thriller. Only two real suspects and more given over to political considerations and thriller elements. Contemporary racism which using dialect speech does not help. It just takes too long to decode and interrupts the reading flow. Also very much of its time so that if you are unfamiliar with, for example, in the realities of train travel of that time the scenario may be confusing. Additionally, in spite of the title, I would not consider this a railway mystery as although it states that the railway cars, the Pullmans, are full, it limits the characters to those who visited the (men only) smoking compartment.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews