This book has such great historical detail, very vivid and unforced, that you can't help being immersed in the world. The descriptons of the trains, of the mills, the holiday crowds in Blackpool...excellent. While Martin gives me a great picture of the immediate locales, I found I wanted a map of the area to picture where the trains went. Stringer himself seems a little less odd than he did in the first novel. He's married now, which probably helps. Told in first person, he always refers to "the wife" or "my wife", never her name, which bugged me a lot at first, but it's just him. I liked the mystery, and while Martin gives us a lot of suspects, I had the main villain in mind from the beginning. I didn't catch on to the motive until Martin spelled it out, though. Jim's personal torment over the woman who died is very moving. It isn't a very fast-paced book, but there are some bits of action. I'll read the next in the series.

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