Blood on the Tracks is an anthology of short stories from early detective stories to those of the Golden Age. Each has some connection to railroads and train stations. Like most collections some stories were more entertaining than others and I liked the ones in the last half of the book best. They were arranged in chronological order from earliest to latest and there was was an introduction by the editor. Cautiously recommended for those interested in early detective stories.

This is a good theme for a story collection and a good collection of authors; however, a lot of the stories were impossible crimes and sometimes I get frustrated with those because they don’t seem to hang together even after the detective has explained it.

My favourite story of the collection was “The Level Crossing,” by Freeman Wills Crofts, the supreme railway mystery guy. The Michael Gilbert story was well done as well; he writes very cleanly and unobtrusively. I also actually liked the Michael Innes story too (I did not get on with Hamlet, Revenge! and thought The Journeying Boy was merely fine).

One of the weirder new-to-me characters was the protagonist of The Affair of the Corridor Express, Thorpe Hazell. He is a health zealot and does a wide selection of exercises. Clearly the story in this collection was a later one and readers would have been familiar with him, because the narration refers to him doing “digestive exercises” and put it in quotation marks, which made them sound even WEIRDER, like it was a euphemism.

I would cautiously recommend this collection to fans of the Golden Age of mysteries, especially fans of train books. It feels like a long collection, so one to keep on the bedside table rather than trying to read in a longer sitting. ( )

Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss. ( )

Anthologies are always a tricky business. All the stories in this volume have a common denominator ,a train,trainstation,railroad, train travel...all play a major part in their criminal make up. And it is true that trains and stations create a very special atmosphere. This collection consists of contributions by Athur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L.Sayers,Baroness Orczy,R.Austin Freeman,Will Croft and other highly talented mystery writers. Some of these stories are very good(The Mystery of Felwyn Tunnel,The Man with the Watch,The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway and many others...)and some were,well just average.

But as mentioned before,anthologies are tricky! ( )

This is a collection of mystery short stories set along railways, running from a Doyle non-Holmes (at least, overtly -- an anonymous detectives who might be Holmes suggests an incorrect solution) story, "The Man with the Watches" through to the mid-twentieth century. It includes a story by Canon Whitechurch, a clerical contemporary of Doyle who specialized in railway mysteries, a story by Freeman Will Crofts --usually given to railway timetable alibi stories, but in this case an unpleasant story from the would-be murderer's point of view (something I generally dislike) --there is likewise a horror story, from the point of view of the guilty man, which iI particularly dislike -- up to a much more cheerful story by Michael Gilbert about a female (though by no means sexy) fence. While some individual stories like Gilbert's are enjoyable, overall I did not get as much pleasure out of this collection as I have from some others. ( )