1860, Wimborne, Dorset. Rebecca Tullidge, miserably married to her callous husband, finds some escape through a love affair with another man. After putting her drunk husband to bed one Saturday night, she sneaks from their lodge to meet railway officer, John Bedloe. But much to her horror, she trips over her love''s corpse on the railway tracks. The railway director calls Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Lemming in from London to solve the hideous crime....

When a rare silver coffeepot in the shape of a locomotive disappears from the train to Cardiff and a murder subsequently occurs, Inspector Colbert and his sergeant are called in to investigate.

The fifth book in the Home Front Detective Series. London, Autumn 1916. When he slips out of a house in the early hours of the morning, Simon Wilder is too preoccupied to realise that he is being stalked. As he walks along the street, lights begin to dim as a warning that there's another Zeppelin attack. Guns begin to pound away as British aeroplanes attack the Zeppelin. Suddenly, it bursts into flame and lights up the whole sky. The crowds cheer...

"It is the autumn of 1917, and at the luxurious Lotus Hotel in Chelsea, a maid is disrupted from her morning rounds by a horrifying discovery: instead of the dignified older lady who has been occupying a room, she finds the dead body of a much younger woman. Harvey Marmion and Joe Keedy are dispatched from Scotland Yard to investigate, and learn that she seems to have been poisoned. But who is this woman? And what has happened to the previous occupant...

"London, 1817. An impatient crowd is gathered outside the stage door of the Covent Garden Theatre, desperate for a glimpse of actress Hannah Granville after her latest performance as Lady Macbeth, amongst them the Prince Regent himself. But before she can appear a gunshot sounds, and a man lies dead on the ground amidst the ensuing chaos. Sir Roger Mellanby MP had been a spearhead for social reform, although his political leanings had made him many...

"June, 1917. While another daylight air raid batters London, the body of respected businessman and devoted family man Gilbert Donohoe is fished from the Thames, the victim of strangulation. Inspector Marmion struggles with the case alongside his anxieties for his now-missing son, Paul, but the pressure increases when the Metropolitan Police are the target of a series of vicious press attacks. As Marmion is pilloried in the press, he uncovers a seedy...

"Halloween 1861. A special train with two carriages steams across the Lake District at night on its way to a place notorious for its record of supernatural incidents. Most of those on board have been fortified by alcohol so the mood is boisterous. Lighting inside the carriages is poor and without warning, the lamp goes out in the last compartment of the second carriage, plunging it into darkness. When the special reaches the end of its journey, the...