Liverpool Football Club is England's most successful club with eight European cup victories, 18 League titles, 15 FA Charity/Community Shields, eight League Cups, seven FA Cups and three UEFA Super Cups. This book comprises of a running history of the club, and features Liverpool FC greats and 60 items of memorabilia.
Leicester, 1952: A team of archaeologists digging for the lost bones of King Richard III beneath the arches of the Great Central railway viaduct make a shocking discovery. A child’s body. It has been incinerated so completely that only bone fragments and a few teeth remain. Railway detectives DI Vignoles and DS Trinder are called in to investigate. They soon discover a possible connection with a similar murder two years earlier in nearby Barrow Hill. And when a third boy goes missing, their worst fears are confirmed – a serial killer is on the loose, preying on young train-spotters. Inspector Vignoles and his colleagues from the British Railways Detective Department must act quickly to track down the killer before he strikes again… Set in and around Leicester at a time when Britain was just starting to emerge from postwar austerity, this novel offers a warm but unsentimental portrait of the lives of the men and women who worked on the former Great Central Railway. Blood and Custard is a macabre, gripping thriller that is bound to appeal to railway enthusiasts and all lovers of good historical crime fiction.
Summer 1951. A young boy fishes something sinister out of a river. A ship enters Liverpool carrying a stoker who is not who he claims to be. In the fairground, an odd character looking like a down-at-heel Marlene Dietrich, cranks a barrel organ and sings 'Mack the Knife' in a cracked voice. She sheds a silent tear for her long-dead brother. D.I.Charles Vignoles and wife Anna are holidaying in the seaside resort of New Brighton, but all is not well in their boarding house. A fellow guest is missing, and soon they are drawn into a steadily-deepening mystery. What does the missing man know about a violent robbery at Bidston station that left a man dead? Did he know too much? Charles and Anna's quest to discover the truth takes them onto Liverpool's Overhead Railway and across the electrified railway lines of Wirral. But as the sun beats down on sea and sand, there are sinister and violent men moving through the holiday crowds ...
As the Big Freeze of 1947 grips the land, the railways struggle in their battle against the snow and refugees from the recent war in Europe, freezing in the Displaced Person’s Camp at Finmere, are forced to resort to desperate measures to stay warm. The snow lies deep as a murder of crows sits and waits upon a telegraph wire along the edge of a lonely railway cutting. A steam engine storms out of Catesby tunnel and a young woman is thrown from the passing train. A killer is stalking the line… Set against the backdrop of a dark and austere postwar Britain, Inspector Vignoles and Sergeant Trinder of the LNER detective department are soon involved in their most deadly investigation to date.
Set in the immediate post-war years, this is the third in a series of stories featuring Inspector Vignoles, a railway detective working out of Leicester Central station, on the London Extension section of the long-lost Great Central Railway.
Violet McIntyre has a decision to make. Her mother and younger sister depend on Violet making this the correct choice, but she could never have forseen just how bad it would prove to be. Soon Violet's life is curiously linked to an investigation that Detective Inspector Charles Vignoles of the L.N.E.R Detective Department is pursuing. Vignoles thinks he's making good progress, but when two young railway cleaners at Woodford Halse locomotive depot make a startling discovery, everything spirals out of control, becoming ever deadlier by the hour. D.I. Vignoles struggles to understand the worsening situation, and like the smoke from the grimy locomotives that gets in his eyes, his judgment becomes clouded. But he cannot afford to make a mistake - a woman's life depends upon it. Set in 1946 during the austere gloom of post-war Britain, this is a gripping and atmospheric murder mystery, laced throughout by the atmosphere of the old Great Central Railway and the swing beat of the music of the time.
Smog chokes London as the body of Jack Pym floats in the oily waters of the Regent's Canal near Marylbone station. Presumed a suicide, it looks a simple case, but D.I. Vignoles of the British Railways detective department suspects foul play. Pym's wife is telling lies, and nothing is quite what it seems.
'I know she's out there - beside the viaduct. Waiting…' The signalman looked anxious. ‘She does that too - but always on the last train. Yes, the last train to Brackley Central.' Richard Irons, Magdalen College School's new mathematics master, awakens when a strange woman creeps into his compartment with a sad tale to tell - and a deadly favour to ask. But as the train reaches Brackley Central she slips through his arms like a phantom. Detective Inspector Vignoles will never have a more curious and baffling case as he searches for a young woman apparently back from the dead, a dangerous dog on the prowl - and for the Cobra's Eye, a diamond that destroys the lives of all who touch it…
An eagerly-awaited selection of brand-new stories featuring Chief Inspector Vignoles and his much-loved colleagues from the British Railways Detective Department as they tackle a varied caseload of odd, baffling and blood-curdling crimes… In the title piece, a railway worker is found dead beside the Mountsorrel Railway. It looks like suicide, but could it be murder? ‘One Way Ticket’ shows a different side to the usually irascible Superintendent Badger as he recounts a perplexing murder mystery from his early years in the force. In ‘Rogue Parcels’ Anna Carelli (the future Mrs Vignoles) shows her own aptitude for crime-solving in a sparkling World War II yarn involving stolen packages at Leicester Central. Set in and around the former Great Central Railway, these interwoven stories move between 1939 and 1953. Whether speeding towards Dover on ‘The Golden Arrow’, or hurtling through the snowy night aboard the ‘Master Cutler’, this wonderful collection will be a treat for all readers who enjoy a good crime story set against the atmosphere and romance of Britain’s steam railways.
Two Posts and a Field is a unique look at Liverpool FC. Richly illustrated with stunning photos, it is part travelogue, part exploration of the LFC Museum's hidden treasures and part personal story, as Neville Gabie takes us from his childhood listening to games on the radio in South Africa to watching his first match at Anfield.