A chance encounter, a case of mistaken identity and a seemingly innocent train journey all come together to place the lives of international leaders and family members of the central characters at risk.
Night Train to Berlin by Margaret de Rohan is the author's first foray into the adult crime market from children's books. Cleverly she has transitioned some of the key characters and upped the pace, intensity by embroiling them in a gripping international terror plot.
Highly readable, impeccably researched and even with some refreshing humour; especially the relationship of the police chief Maigret and his wife Megan, the book is at the cosy rather than gory end of the crime spectrum and will be enjoyed by fans of Agatha Raisin and Poirot novels.
'Are you going to Scarborough Fair?' This is the question a stranger asks a woman at Les Invalides in Paris. She spontaneously responds with the next line of the English folk song, and the man walks away without a further word. Ten minutes later he is seriously injured in a hit-and-run incident nearby which witnesses say looked deliberate. Who is this man? Why does he seem fixated on something due to happen in Berlin on the 15th March: the Ides of March about which Julius Caesar was warned prior to his assassination in 44BC? And what is the connection with the Scarborough Fair folk song and Simon and Garfunkel in New York in 1985? The woman's husband, Chief Inspector Philippe Maigret of the Police Nationale de Paris, fears that what the man said was the mistaken approach of a spy - or a terrorist - and that his wife's life is now in danger. Who was this man's real contact? And why was he being followed by someone with links to a Middle Eastern country's security services? When his wife and grandson disappear from the overnight train from Paris to Berlin less than a week later, Chief Inspector Maigret steps up his investigation with the help of Chief Inspector Clive Scott from Scotland Yard and they race through Europe to get their answers in a new Jaguar 'borrowed' from the British Embassy in Paris... Can Scarborough Fair really be in Berlin? And can it take place on the Ides of March? All will be revealed in this gripping thriller that will appeal to lovers of suspense and Francophiles alike.
Margaret de Rohan was born and educated in Adelaide, Australia. She moved to London in 1976. She has published four previous books with Matador, the latest being Max Survives Paris (2014), but Night Train is her first adult book.
