THE RAILWAY MURDERS: Ten classic true crime stories.

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.FINE/FINE.No owner inscrptn but a price-clip to dw/dj.Bright,crisp,clean,glossy laminated,colour pictorial artwork,
by Sally Lecky-Thompson,illustrated front panel of dw/dj,with white lettering; with negligible shelf-wear and creasing to edges and corners - no nicks or tears present.A tiny circular impression to rear,top edge of dw/dj lightly affecting the concomitant area to the board beneath, elsewhere to dw/dj some unobtrusive,light,superficial scoring to both panels.Top edges lightly dust-soiled with some minimal sporadic spotting but still clean,fore-edges brighter and cleaner - without spotting; contents bright,tight,clean - virtually pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners,appears unread - apart from my own collation.Bright,crisp,clean,sharp-cornered,publisher's original plain black cloth boards with bright,crisp,blocked gilt letters to spine/
backstrip and immaculate plain white endpapers.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,9-173pp [paginated] includes 11 chapters with contemporary b/w newspaper reproductions and contemporary b/w biographical photographs; plus [unpaginated] half-title+title pages,contents list/ table,individual chapter separator pages,and acknowledgements and sources at rear.
At about twenty minutes past ten on the night of Saturday 9 July 1864 the driver of an empty North London train noticed a dark object lying on the track between Hackney Wick and Bow stations.It was the body of a man,later indentified as Thomas Briggs,a chief bank clerk,and his murder - committed for his gold watch and eye-glasses - was the first on a British railway.
Since then the railways must have suggested themselves to many would-be killers,as they have to countless crime writers,as the perfect setting for murder - there are enclosed compartments,the speed,long tunnels and empty stretches of track,the casual meetings of strangers and the left-luggage offices,ideal for the disposal of incriminating evidence.
But these ten true stories represent very nearly the whole tally of actual 'railway murders' committed in Britain since the first locomotive trundled between Stockton and Darlington in 1825.
They include,among others,the case of the callous Patrick Mahon who in 1924 scattered his lover's remains from the windows of a moving train between London and Eastbourne,the famous Brighton trunk murders of 1934 where the investigation of one murder led to the discovery of another,and the killing in 1957 on the London Underground of Polish countess,which seems to have had a mysterious political motive.Many were committed for money,some out of fear,some apparently by mistake,whilst for others no murderer or motive has ever been discovered.And,though these stories contain many of the elements of the fictional ones,the authors - who include such names as H.B. Irving,Edgar Wallace,Scotland Yard detective Frederick Porter Wensley as well as Jonathan Goodman himself - also show that facts can be stranger than fiction.
For in almost all the stories,the solved as well as the unsolved,reality has thrown up the small inconsistencies of human behaviour and motive,the untidy,inexplicable pieces of evidence and strange circumstances that continue to fascinate and raise tantalizing questions.
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