Derby Day at Epsom Downs. A multitude of people crowd to watch the races: dukes and dustmen, bishops and beggars, privileged ladies and prostitutes. The gamut of Victorian society and a hotbed for crime and crooks of all kinds. With the nation a-flutter in the run up to this national event, a disembodied head is discovered on a passenger train at Crewe; the first in a murky course of events that takes in murder, fraud and race-fixing. Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant are assigned to the case and are soon snarled up in a web of skulduggery stretching across the country. They are forced to ask themselves, just how much is someone prepared to hazard to win?

Author Biography

EDWARD MARSTON was born and brought up in South Wales. A full-time writer for over thirty years, he has worked in radio, film, television and the theatre, and is a former chairman of the Crime Writers' Association. Prolific and highly successful, he is equally at home writing children's books or literary criticism, plays or biographies and settings for his crime novels range from the world of professional golf to the compilation of the Domesday Survey. The Iron Horse is the fourth book in the series featuring Inspector Robert Colbeck and Sergeant Victor Leeming, set in 1850s London.