Carola Dunn. Murder on the Flying Scotsman (1997)

     Carola Dunn. Murder on the Flying Scotsman (1997) I bought this because of its setting (I collect fiction with a railway motif or setting), which Dunn describes quite convincingly, even for people like me who have direct experience of steam trains in England. To create the 1923 social milieu Dunn relies too much on cliche, that is, she’s writing to her presumed audience’s expectations. She also imports a good deal of late C20 political and social values. It’s unlikely that a Detective Inspector, his sergeant, and his detective constable have no racist attitudes whatever, for example. But apart from such (very American) flaws, the pastiche works very nicely, and afforded a few hours of pleasure. The heroine, Daisy Dalrymple (who’s a Hon), is charming, if a little too demure when it comes to pursuing her love interest, the dashing Inspector Fletcher, a widower whose daughter Belinda has stowed away on the train that Daisy is taking to Edinburgh (where else?). There’s a murder on the train, a mess of family members that all want what they believe will be a sizeable inheritance, a sinister threat or two, and so forth. Plot complications abound, characters are agreeably two-dimensional, and much fun is had by all. Would make a nice little TV series of the less demanding sort. **½ (2004)