In this thrilling selection of short stories, a young porter is found dead in a coal tub, Colbeck devises a trap to catch a thief, and a burnt train carriage holds a gruesome secret in a small coastal village.

As Colbeck and his trusty aide, Sergeant Victor Leeming, begin to piece together clues and motives for each crime, it becomes clear the pair must stay a step ahead of the culprits to solve the cases. With a new suspect at every turn, can the duo unearth the villains?

Faced with the austerities of a bitterly cold English winter, the theatre is deserted and Westfield s Men find themselves out of work. Fortuitously, the company is invited to perform at a country home in Essex; welcome news to the disgruntled players. The company decides it s the perfect opportunity to trial their new play The Witch of Colchester. However, when the group s leading actor begins to fall mysteriously ill, the company fear witchcraft might be involved. Then on the performance night, an audience member inexplicably collapses and dies, paving the way for Nicholas Bracewell to...

During a performance of their new play, A Trick to Catch a Chaste Lady, Westfield s Men are sabotaged, and they find themselves in the throngs of an audience-player melee. In the midst of the rotten-vegetable battlefield, one of the audience members is found stabbed, and their masterful clown, Barnaby Gill, is discovered with a broken leg.REVIEWS "Marston has created a mystery series that manage to seem both timeless and historical simultaneously. This is an amazing feat for any writer and Marston should be proud of this accomplishment."Reviewing the Evidence"

Summer, 1858. Young Imogen Burnhope and her maid Rhoda board a non-stop train to Oxford to visit Imogen's Aunt Cassandra, who waits on the platform at the terminus to greet them. All the passengers alight at Oxford, but the two women are nowhere to be seen. The train is searched and the coachman swears he saw them join first class, however they seem to have vanished into thin air

Westfield's men are in dire straights, and their playwright appears to be suffering from a lack of creative inspiration. Thankfully, the company is offered a new play, The Malevolent Comedy, which they believe will drag them out of their rut and put on a spectacle enough to rival Banbury's Men, preventing them from stealing their audiences. However, during the play's opening performance, one of the cast members is struck down after being poisoned, making it his first and last appearance on stage. Suspicion is rife and Nicolas Bracewell, the trusty book keeper, refuses to let the crime go...

Westfield's Men are out of work. When their widowed patron chooses a Danish bride and plans a wedding in Elsinore, the troupe is invited to perform, as guests of King Christian IV. But the play they select will prove a disastrous choice. Westfield's Men soon find themselves embroiled in political intrigue and religious dissension.

1859. St Mary's Church, Spondon. A little girl playing hide-and-seek jumps into a freshly-dug grave to find a dead man already occupying it. It is the body of Cedric Norton, a senior director of the Midland Railway. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming travel to Derbyshire to investigate.

1860, Wimborne, Dorset. Rebecca Tullidge, miserably married to her callous husband, finds some escape through a love affair with another man. After putting her drunk husband to bed one Saturday night, she sneaks from their lodge to meet railway officer, John Bedloe. But much to her horror, she trips over her lover's corpse on the railway tracks. The railway director calls Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming in from London to solve the hideous crime. As the pair arrives in the countryside, they find there is no shortage of difficult personalities and conflicting alibis, making the mystery...

The Moscardi Circus is travelling by train to Newcastle for their next show when a collision on the track causes pandemonium. When the body of a woman is discovered in nearby woodland, Inspector Colbeck is desperate to lend assistance, believing the two incidents might be connected. Who is the nameless woman and who is targeting the circus?

1817. Chalk Farm, London, is the scene for a duel between a lady's two ardent admirers. Paul Skillen stands as Mark Bowerman's second. Although the duel is broken up, one of the duelists is found dead. Paul and his twin Peter are determined to see justice done and are soon enmeshed in threads of inheritance, treachery and fraud.