Blackpool Highflyer

Andrew Martin has written for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday and Granta, among many other publications. His highly acclaimed first novel, Bilton, described by Jon Ronson as 'enormously funny, genuinely moving and even a little scary', was followed by The Bobby Dazzlers, which Tim Lott hailed as 'truly unusual - a comic novel that actually makes you laugh'. In praise of his first Jim Stringer novel, The Necropolis Railway, the Evening Standard said 'the age of steam has rarely been better evoked', while the Mirror described the book as 'a brilliant murder mystery'.

"'Genuinely gripping... A brilliant evocation of Edwardian working-class life - the sort of thing D.H. Lawrence might have written had he been less verbose or been blessed with a sense of humour.' Peter Parker, Evening Standard 'Evokes Edwardian Yorkshire and Lancashire, their great industrial prosperity and singular ways of living, quite brilliantly in a historical whodunnit which for its fresh and stealthy approach to past times deserves the adjective Bainbridgean.' Ian Jack, Guardian (Books of the Year) 'A steamy whodunnit... This may well be the best fiction about the railways since Dickens.' Michael Williams, Independent on Sunday 'Unique and important... There is no one else who is writing like Andrew Martin today.' Ian Marchant, Guardian"