In each of the preceding books*, the author painted a believable view of what society was like in the early 1900s, especially for a young, unattached female, then added a variety of interesting characters and situations, using the San Francisco coastal area as backdrop. Caroline Fremont Jones began her adventures by traveling west from Boston to avoid an arranged marriage, dropping her first name and more than a few inhibitions along the way. She is a feminist in a time when women had not yet been granted the vote.

By the time Death Train opens, Fremont has achieved a reconciliation with her stern but now ailing father and has decided she is emotionally strong enough to go back to Boston to see him and her despised stepmother. It is on this cross-country trip that she and her “partner in business and life,” Michael, are injured and separated when the train mysteriously crashes in Utah.

The storyline proceeds to switch frequently from Fremont’s situation and point of view to Michael’s, forcing the reader to track two diverging plots. Rather than heightening the suspense, this method of writing only serves to confuse and eventually irritate the reader. We go from Michael’s anguish in learning Fremont has literally disappeared from the train wreck without a trace to Fremont’s frustration with her unusual rescuer. The timeline moves from present to past to present again as Fremont regains her memory and she and Michael separately piece together what happened.

Death Train also suffers from plot overload. Not only must Michael recover from his own injuries, he must find Fremont, solve the case of what happened to the train, and as if that weren’t enough, a figure from his mysterious past reappears. Meanwhile, Fremont is recuperating from serious injuries of her own and spends a slow six weeks in the restrictive home of a Mormon man and his five wives. Fremont eventually makes her escape to a nearby town. The Mormons then sink from view with nary a ripple as Fremont proceeds to meet and charm a whole new set of characters.

Because of the separate scenarios and many disparate events, this book has an uneven, overstuffed feel to it. I cannot recommend that you buy this one. If you want to read it, save your hard-earned money and borrow it from the library.

-- K. W. Becker

*The Strange Files of Fremont Jones
*Emperor Norton’s Ghost
*Fire and Fog
*The Bohemian Murders