The Case of the 'Hail Mary' Celeste: The Case Files of Jack Wenlock, Railway Detective

Pryce, Malcolm

ISBN 10: 1408858924 / ISBN 13: 9781408858929

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015

About this Item

First Edition. Bloomsbury Publishing 2015 first edition. Pages clean and bright, binding firm, minor shelf wear to dust jacket. ALL ITEMS ARE DISPATCHED FROM THE UK WITHIN 48 HOURS ( BOOKS ORDERED OVER THE WEEKEND DISPATCHED ON MONDAY) ALL OVERSEAS ORDERS SENT BY TRACKABLE AIR MAIL. IF YOU ARE LOCATED OUTSIDE THE UK PLEASE ASK US FOR A POSTAGE QUOTE FOR MULTI VOLUME SETS BEFORE ORDERING.

Seller Inventory # mon0000876622

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Case of the 'Hail Mary' Celeste: The Case Files of Jack Wenlock, Railway Detective
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1408858924
• ISBN 13: 9781408858929
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Includes dust jacket.

About this title

Synopsis

It was Tuesday the second of December 1947 when Jenny the Spiddler walked into my office: almost a month before they nationalised my mother.

Jack Wenlock is the last of the Railway Goslings: that fabled cadre of railway detectives created at the Weeping Cross Railway Servants' Orphanage, who trod the corridors of the GWR trains in the years 1925 to 1947. Sworn to uphold the name of God's Wonderful Railway and all that the good men of England fought for in two world wars, Jack keeps the trains free of fare dodgers and purse-stealers, bounders and confidence tricksters, German spies and ladies of the night.

But now, as the clock ticks down towards the nationalisation of the railways Jack finds himself investigating a case that begins with an abducted great aunt, but soon develops into something far darker and more dangerous. It reaches up to the corridors of power and into the labyrinth of the greatest mystery in all the annals of railway lore - the disappearance in 1915 of twenty-three nuns from the 7.25 Swindon to Bristol Temple Meads, or the case of the 'Hail Mary' Celeste.

Shady government agents, drunken riverboat captains, a bandaged bookseller, a missing manuscript, a melancholic gorilla and a 4070 Godstow Castle engine - the one with a sloping throatplate in the firebox and the characteristic double cough in the chuffs - all collide on a journey that will take your breath away.

About the Author

Malcolm Pryce was born in the UK and has spent much of his life working and travelling abroad. He has been, at various times, a BMW assembly-line worker, a hotel washer-up, a deck hand on a yacht sailing the South Seas, an advertising copywriter and the world's worst aluminium salesman. In 1998 he gave up his day job and booked a passage on a banana boat bound for South America in order to write Aberystwyth Mon Amour. He spent the next seven years living in Bangkok, where he wrote three more novels in the series, Last Tango in Aberystwyth, The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth and Don't Cry for Me Aberystwyth. In 2007 he moved back to the UK and now lives in Oxford, where he wrote From Aberystwyth with Love, The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still, and, most recently, The Case of the Hail Mary Celeste.

malcolmpryce.com / @exogamist