A gothic tale of murder and corruption set in 1840s Victorian London, taking inspiration from our most famous 19th century writers.

1848, the spectre of revolution stalks London…

“The story of the death of Sir Martin Malprelate acquired, from its earliest telling, a phantasmagorical quality, shrouding the violence of the assault in an embellishment of diabolic spectres and uncanny mystery.”

Struck down in a Camden street, the railway magnate never lived to see his dream of a line from London to Middlemarch. But who was to blame? An angry mob? Or were the witnesses who swore he was struck by a demonic train, wheels ringing on rails where no rails lay, to be believed? A hated man who many wished dead? An impossible death?

Truly a case for the father of all detectives.

From award-winning author Adam Roberts comes a gothic murder mystery like no other; a gripping novel set in the tangled realms of 19th century fiction. In a world woven from the imaginations of Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Arthur Conan Doyle the inexplicable death of a railway magnate opens endless possibilities.