Andrew Martin

Andrew Martin (b. 1962) is a British novelist and journalist who has carved out a territory in historical crime fiction that no one else occupies: the railway murder mystery. His Jim Stringer novels — a series of crime novels set in Edwardian and early twentieth-century England, in which the detective is a railwayman — combine atmospheric period recreation, meticulous railway history, and solidly plotted whodunits in a combination that is peculiarly and irresistibly English.

Life and Career

Martin is a Yorkshire-born journalist who has written for The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The New Statesman, and Granta. He is a genuine railway obsessive — not merely someone who has researched trains for a novel but someone whose nonfiction output demonstrates a deep, lifelong engagement with British railway culture, history, and the particular kind of Englishness that railways represent.

His nonfiction includes Underground, Overground: A Passenger’s History of the Tube (2012) — a highly readable history of the London Underground that won the Hertfordshire Book Award — Belles and Whistles: Five Journeys Through Time on Britain’s Trains (2014), and Seats of London: A Field Guide to London Transport Moquette Patterns (2016, about the fabric designs on Tube seats — a subject that only a true enthusiast would consider worthy of a book, and that Martin makes genuinely interesting).

The Jim Stringer Series

Jim Stringer is a railwayman in the North Eastern Railway, later the London and North Eastern Railway, who becomes involved in criminal investigations through his professional life. The series begins with The Necropolis Railway (2002), set in 1903, in which young Jim arrives in London and takes a job at the London Necropolis Railway — a real railway that ran trains from Waterloo to Brookwood Cemetery, transporting the dead for burial. When Jim discovers that the railway’s operations involve something more sinister than routine funerals, he is drawn into an investigation.

The premise is brilliant: a railway that transports corpses is the perfect setting for a murder mystery, and Martin exploits the macabre potential of the Necropolis Railway while simultaneously providing a detailed and fascinating portrait of early-twentieth-century London railway operations.

The Blackpool Highflyer (2004) moves Jim to the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and a case involving sabotage on the Blackpool excursion trains. The Lost Luggage Porter (2006) is set in York’s great railway station. Murder at Deviation Junction (2007) takes Jim to the Durham coalfields. The Last Train to Scarborough (2009), The Baghdad Railway Club (2012, set during World War I in Mesopotamia), and Night Train to Jamalpur (2017, set in 1920s India) expand the series geographically.

The Somme Stations (2011) is the series’ finest novel — Jim serves as a railway operating officer on the Western Front during World War I, where the railways that move troops, supplies, and ammunition to the front are as essential as the infantry. The novel captures the war’s horror while remaining focused on its particular subject: the railway infrastructure that made industrial-scale warfare possible. It won the CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger.

Themes and Critical Standing

Martin’s novels work on two levels simultaneously. They are competent, atmospheric crime fiction — solidly plotted, with period dialogue and convincing historical settings. But they are also love letters to a particular vision of England — an England of steam locomotives, brass fittings, timetables, station buffets, and the quiet hierarchies of railway employment. This vision is nostalgic but not sentimental: Martin is aware that the Edwardian railway world he celebrates was also a world of rigid class distinctions, industrial danger, and imperial ambition.

He is compared to the historical crime fiction of Lindsey Davis (for the immersive period detail) and to the railway writings of John Betjeman and Jack Simmons (for the genuine enthusiasm and scholarship).

Key Works

• The Necropolis Railway (2002)
• The Blackpool Highflyer (2004)
• The Somme Stations (2011) — CWA Historical Dagger

Collecting Martin

First editions of the Jim Stringer novels (Faber and Faber) bring $15–$35; signed copies $30–$60. The Necropolis Railway (Faber, 2002) as the series debut is the most sought-after title. The nonfiction railway books (Profile Books, Aurum Press) bring $10–$20. Martin signs at UK literary events and railway enthusiast gatherings. The complete Jim Stringer series is a satisfying and affordable collection for readers who love both crime fiction and railway history.