"What makes this story line come alive, especially for old-time train buffs, is Martin's obviously deep knowledge of and love for everything having to do with the steam locomotives and stations of the past. His hero, Jim Stringer, has made his way, during the last years of the 19th century, through the railway ranks to the position of detective with Britain's North Eastern Railway Police ... [and] traverses an industrialized landscape as bleak and polluted as any in Dickens or Upton Sinclair."—Booklist