Fiction, Mystery & Crime, Teen Fiction

Death Train to Boston

Name: Death Train to Boston
Author: Dianne Day
ISBN: 9780553580556

by Dianne Day

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Overview

Autumn 1908 finds Caroline Fremont Jones and her partner in love and work, Michael Kossoff, traveling incognito, riding the rails from San Francisco to Boston. The railroad hired the sleuthing couple to investigate a series of accidents. But before they can solve the mystery, they become victims of the worst mishap yet when their train blows up near Salt Lake City. Was it a callous act of vandalism-or something even more sinister? Michael isn't about to let his injuries slow down his search for answers...or for Fremont, who has not been seen since the accident-dead or alive.

Fortunately, the badly injured Fremont was rescued from the train's wreckage. But her unlikely savior, the leader of a breakaway Mormon sect, has hidden her away in his remote wilderness community. It seems that Melancthon Pratt has big plans for Fremont...not the least of which is for her to become his sixth wife. Now Fremont's only hope is that her genius for artifice will help her devise an escape. That is, unless Michael, shadowed by an old nemesis and a mysterious stranger, can find her before a heartless killer claims both their lives.

Synopsis

Romantic Times - Toby Bromberg

Told from the alternating views of Michael and Freemont, Death Train to Boston is an exciting tale of adventure and danger that further solidifies Day's reputation as one of today's top storytellers.

About the Author, Dianne Day

Dianne Day spent her early years in the Mississippi Delta before moving to San Francisco and the Bay Area. Fremont Jones has appeared in four previous mysteries: The Strange Files of Fremont Jones, which won the Macavity Award for Best First Novel, and three bestselling sequels. Day has now completed her sixth Fremont Jones mystery, Beacon Street Mourning, and is working on a novel of suspense based on the life of Clara Barton.

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Editorials

Toby Bromberg

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This swift and upbeat story features Fremont Jones, scion of a distinguished Boston family, and Michael Kossoff, a Russian nobleman and spy for the czar, who, in the fifth in this series (after Emperor Norton's Ghost), are continuing not only as passionate (but discreet) lovers but also as partners in their own San Francisco-based PI agency. Jones and Kossoff, traveling incognito on a case for the Southern and Union Pacific Railroad in the fall of 1908, are separated after a deliberately caused train wreck in Utah's Wasatch mountains. Michael, suffering a broken collarbone, searches for Fremont in vain: she has been abducted from the site by Melancthon Pratt, a fanatical Mormon who has five wives and is determined to make the lustrous Fremont his sixth. Secluded in a stark room, incapacitated by two broken legs, the shrewd and imaginative young woman beguiles the other wives and keeps the single-minded Pratt at bay. While Michael uses his considerable skills--a background in espionage enhanced by a sixth sense--to search for Fremont, he runs into malevolent figures from his past who have murder on their minds. The basic mystery--who is sabotaging the railroad and why--doesn't seem to matter, as the ongoing adventures of the sharply defined and appealing cast of characters carry the lively story. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Forget about the title. The train carrying Fremont Jones and Michael Kossoff eastward from San Francisco is dynamited before page one, leaving the two partners in love and work (the Agency, Discreet Inquiries) wounded, separated, and ignorant of each other's fate. Michael, whose broken collarbone has hardly slowed him down, soon books passage again with Fremont's Palo Alto friend Meiling Li. He's bent on determining whether the explosion had anything to do with the harassing vandalism on the Southern Pacific line he and Fremont had originally been hired to investigate. And since Michael's enemies have a trick of popping up again like Wile E. Coyote, it's not long before he's encountered two adversaries he thought were dead, both of them evidently hired to spy on him or kill him. Meanwhile, Fremont's peril is greater: She's been rescued by Melancthon Pratt, a Mormon who's convinced that his five wives are all barren and that an angel has sent him to the spot where Fremont, flung clear of the train, lay with two broken legs. Can Fremont figure out which of the wives might help her escape while Michael struggles toward her, dogged by killers with every mile? Light on mystery, medium-light on romantic intrigue, heavy on cliffhanger endings, Fremont's fifth (Emperor Norton's Ghost, 1998, etc.) will best please audiences who really wonder about the answers to those questions.