One Bear's Opinion -- Book Review

Roll: 4
Monopoly Property: B&O Railroad
Book: The Silver Locomotive Mystery
Author: Edward Marston

The task for the B&O Railroad property was to read a book where the protagonist sets out on journey at some point during the book. I thought a mystery in the Railway detective series would definitely fit the bill. And it did. I lost count of the number of times the characters went from London to Cardiff and back again in the book, and there were a couple of train trips to other areas as well.

The Silver Locomotive Mystery revolved around a murder and theft of a silver coffeepot made in the shape of a locomotive. Reading the book, I kept wondering what people would want a silver coffeepot for. Surely the using it would tarnish the silver quickly, and having it just sit on the shelf seems pointless, but that’s just me and I’d rather have my shelf space devoted to books than knick-knacks or trinkets.

This was the sixth book in the Inspector Robert Colbeck/Railway Detective series. It was the first one I had read, so the references to previous adventures — and there were quite a few — were lost on me. I felt a bit lost when the proviso adventures were mentioned, and would have preferred either fewer mentions or more explanation, but that’s a problem with coming in in the middle of an established series. I have seen it in other series I read, though for the most part I have begun at the beginning.

The book was an easy read, and the mystery had the detective guessing as well as readers. There were plenty of red herrings, but all seemed plausible at the time. There were a couple of plot threads that were left dangling and that bothered me. But overall, the book was worth reading and I may search out the rest of the series at some point, if I can find them for the right price. I got this one at a remainders sale for $4 and would pay that much for it, but anything more might be too much. And I feel somewhat bad about that. Edward Marston writes under other pseudonyms, and his series set on classic ocean liners written as Conrad Allen is one of my favorites. I am a bit disappointed that I did not enjoy this episode as much as that one.

Overall Rating: Three Cups of Tea with cakes enjoyed in the observation car

Happy Reading Everyone,
Oliver