Patti S. (Pattakins) reviewed on 1/19/2007 + 365 more book reviews

There are very few things that have a stronger romantic hold on people than do trains. The "Iron Horse" has captivated people for far longer than any living person can remember and trains are a mainstay of the entertainment industry. Just think about how many songs, movies, TV shows and books feature trains, the list is just too long to remember. There are also numerous clubs for those who take the fascination with trains just a little farther than the rest of us do. It is a railroad excursion held by one of these clubs that provides the setting for this very entertaining book.

Cabot Cove insurance agent Reggie Weems is vice president of one of these clubs and invites Jessica to be his guest on one of the club's excursions in British Columbia. On the first day of the trip, club president Alvin Blevin goes into convulsions and dies very unselfishly setting up a mystery to be solved. Blevin, despite his selfless act that creates our mystery, is very unpopular with most of the club members so the suspect list is very long. At first though, Jessica is the only one who suspects foul play but she, being a mystery writer, has done a lot of research on poisons and immediately recognizes Blevin's symptoms.

To add even more romance to this story, the agency that is charged with investigating the murder is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Mounties. Once RCMP Detective Christian Marshall gets the autopsy report and learns that Jessica was absolutely right about the poison he begins to take her sleuthing seriously and ends up relying on her for many of his clues. As for Jessica, her curiosity is running at full throttle and she ends up in quite a bit of danger before she finds the path that leads to the guilty party.

This is one of the better books in this series, but with trains and Mounties it couldn't possibly fail. The scenery along the train's route is beautifully described and there is even a lady on the train who carries a book about wildflowers so she can point out the different species of flora that the train passes by. The characters, and some of them are indeed characters, are believable and well thought out and this mystery really draws the reader into the story, much more so than in some of the other books in this series. Best of all though, despite numerous red herrings the reader actually has enough information to solve the mystery before Jessica does so. There are some sub-plots that information is withheld on, but the Blevin murder is solvable. Mr. Bain has a tendency to withhold information but he does a splendid job with this book.

If you only read one "Murder She Wrote" mystery, this might well be the one that you should choose.

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