I have a suspicion that most crime readers enjoy books that are set in, or revolve around, trains. Blood on the Tracks, from British Library Crime Classics, includes an introduction from Martin Edwards, and he discusses reasons why trains make “such a suitable background for a mystery.”
Part of the answer surely lies in the enclosed nature of life on board a train–the restrictions of space make for a wonderfully atmospheric environment in which tensions can rise rapidly between a small ‘closed circle’ of murder suspects or characters engaged (as in the enjoyable old film Sleeping Car to Trieste) in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
Edwards covers many wonderful examples of train mysteries in this introduction, so there’s plenty for the aficionado to investigate, but back to this collection which includes:
The Man with the Watches: Arthur Conan Doyle
The Mystery of Felywn Tunnel: L.T Meade and Robert Eustace
How He Cut His Stick: Matthias McDonnell Bodkin
The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway: Baroness Orczy
The Affair of the Corridor Express: Victor L. Whitechurch
The Case of Oscar Brodski: R. Austin Freeman
The Eighth Lamp: Roy Vickers
The Knight’s Cross Signal Problem: Ernest Bramah
The Unsolved Puzzle of the Man with No Face: Dorothy L. Sayers
The Railway Carriage: F. Tennyson Jesse
Mystery of the Slip-Coach: Sapper
The Level-Crossing: Freeman Wills Crofts
The Adventure of the First Class Carriage: Ronald Knox
Murder on the 7:16: Michael Innes
The Coulman Handicap: Michael Gilbert
I’m not going to discuss all the stories–some I enjoyed more than others (and I learned that gold teeth seemed to be, at least in Arthur Conan Doyle’s story, an American thing,) but my three favourites are
The Unsolved Puzzle of the Man with No Face: Dorothy L.Sayers
The Railway Carriage: F. Tennyson Jesse
The Level-Crossing: Freeman Wills Crofts
In The Unsolved Mystery of the Man With No Face, a train compartment full of passengers returning home after the Bank Holiday discuss a savage murder which occurred on a remote beach at East Felpham. This story shows how a train carriage throws together an assortment of people who would not otherwise be found in the same room. In this case, “an overflow” of third-class passengers crowd into the first class carriage. Various opinions rage forth about the crime, but as fate would have it, one of the passengers is Lord Peter Wimsey. Detective Inspector Winterbottom, also in the carriage, pays close attention to Wimsey’s theories of the crime.
F. Tennyson Jesse’s The Railway Carriage, is a supernatural tale which finds Solange (a series character) inside a carriage with two other passengers– an elderly Cockney woman and a “small, insignificant-looking man” who carries a large black bag.
The commonplace little man, with his shaven cheeks and his deft, stubby fingers, had seemed unusual in a way that was not altogether good, but no message of evil such as had so often told her of harm, had knocked upon her senses when he entered the carriage. Yet it was only since he and the old woman had been in it together that she had felt this spiritual unease. Something was wrong between these two human beings–and yet they apparently did not know each other.
Solange’s unease grows, and she’s relieved when the train stops and picks up other passengers who then enter the carriage. These passengers leave shortly after another stop, and Solange is left alone again with the two morose strangers in an atmosphere heavily laden with turmoil….
Another favourite is The Level Crossing by Freeman Wills Crofts. The story opens with Dunstan Thwaite planning to kill his blackmailer. Thwaite, an accountant at a large steel business dipped into company funds when he courted the wealthy Hilda Lorraine. He always meant to return the money, but another man is blamed for the theft and Thwaite thinks he’s home free until an unpleasant, obsequious blackmailer comes into his life. By this time, Thwaite is unhappily married to the demanding heiress, who as it turns out, wasn’t as rich as he assumed, plus she demands to be kept in an affluent lifestyle. Pressures mount, and between the demanding wife and the slimy blackmailer, Thwaite decides he can take no more and so turns to murder.
This collection is a lot of fun to read for anyone who enjoys the combination of crime and trains. Some of the stories make use of the closed carriage (there’s no corridor to exit to) and also the class divide melts as passengers surge, often dashing to catch a train, into whichever carriage can hold them. Murder is discussed and murder takes place. In one story, a train is even the mode of murder. Each story is prefaced with a short bio of the author so eager readers can follow up on favorites.
Review copy
His Futile Preoccupations ..... 
What a great theme for a collection. There’s something very appealing about stories featuring trains, especially if there’s a murder or mystery involved. It sounds as if there’s a good variety of stories here too, something for everyone so to speak.
I don’t think I e read a lot of books set on trains, crime or otherwise, with the exception of Agatha Christie. But I agree, it is an intriguing setting. It’s uncanny to imagine you’re traveling with a murderer.
Such a pity trains have been democratised to do away with the first class carriage and the enclosed compartment. The most inventive murderer couldn’t commit an interesting crime on my train…unless by a lethal sound wave put out by a phone.