Sunday, January 08, 2006

The Necropolis Railway


Just one of the books I read while reading The Fatal Shore just to give myself a little break from the relentless size of the thing. This is a thriller, supposedly, that I kept thinking was going to turn out more thrilling than it really did. The title promises all kinds of spooky steam-age goings-on, but really it's a fairly straightforward story about a young man who comes down to London to work on the railways and gets mixed up in some bad blood about unions and land sales leading to moider; it's Steamtown. Interesting historical research though. There really was a necropolis railway, the spirit of Edwardian London is evoked quite faithfully, and so on. But the story, I thought, was weak. Ah well. It passed the time and at least it was short.

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