It’s the final journey of the historic Highland Falcon steam train. Travel writer Nathaniel Bradshaw and his eleven-year-old nephew Harrison Beck are among the distinguished guests. But misadventure derails the tour just minutes out of King’s Cross station: a jewel thief pinches a diamond brooch in plain sight. As the only child onboard, suspicion falls on Hal.

But is he the only child? Or is there a secret stowaway? Hal notices a girl’s face at the royal carriage window and someone is hiding beneath the serving trolley. With his sketchbook prepped to record details, Hal investigates.

Oh, how this book whips up nostalgia for the great rail adventures of the past! Whistles, steam, sooty windows, firemen, coal and smuts, clever compartments, and Hercule Poirot. Oh, wait: wrong detective - though not quite: The Highland Falcon Thief begins with an epigraph from Agatha Christie, and the style of the mystery with its high society cast, multiple suspects, red herrings, and grand exposition at the end very much celebrate the classic whodunits of the dame of murder.

The Highland Falcon Thief is chock full of great vocabulary: funnels and tunnels, tender, footplate, ironwork, coal chute, fireman, regulator, piston, crankshaft, boiler, sleeper… Hal’s experience on the footplate with Joey shovelling coal into the furnace and filling the tender from a water trough is an episode of high drama, and the scene with Hal snaking across the roof is downright thrilling.

‘Joey furiously span the giant crankshaft round and round with both hands. A loud splash and an earthquake of a roar came from underneath their feet. Torrents of water sluiced out from either side of the locomotive…’ (72)

The world of the train is the chief delight in this middle-grade mystery. But it’s no ordinary train: there are secret compartments, clues in books, hidden messages in the food, maps, royal passengers, lies and alibis, clandestine rendezvous, priceless jewels, a library, a glass-roofed observation car, a surly detective, - have I got your attention?!

“I’d rather be on the Highland Falcon than anywhere else in the world.” - Lenny Singh, 64

It was a blast from the first whistle to the last: I loved it!

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