The Railway Detective faces his most dangerous adversary yet. It is
1852, and Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant Sergeant Victor
Leeming are faced with their most complex and difficult case to date. As
a train speeds over the Sankey Viaduct, a man is hurled from a carriage
and plummets into the canal below. It later transpires that he has been
stabbed to death. With no papers by which to identify the man, the
detectives' investigation is hampered from the start.
Suspecting that the victim may have come from continental Europe,
Colbeck and Leeming take the case to France where a new railway is being
built by a British contractor. But in a new country the detectives face
new problems. Anti-British feeling is rife and Colbeck and Leeming must
put their own lives in danger to pick up the murderer's trail....