The Corpse in the Garden of Perfect Brightness: Malcolm Pryce

The perfect quirky nostalgic crime read – a tale of steam trains, giant squid, missing screenplays, missing mothers and a quest for the truth, from the inimitable Malcolm Pryce

It's the winter of 1948. The four great railway companies have just been nationalised and Jack Wenlock – the last of a fabled cadre of railway detectives – is thrown out onto the street.

Penniless, with new bride Jenny to support, and hiding from a murderous organisation called Room 42, Jack's prospects look bleak.

But then a letter arrives from a mysterious Cornish Countess revealing that Jack's mother – long believed to be dead – may have survived a shipwreck off the coast of Java. Seizing the opportunity to track down his only remaining family member, Jack and Jenny board a boat heading East.

The trail takes them to a run-down Siamese hotel where a motley assortment of drifters has washed up. Here a spy, an assassin, a deserter, an old soldier and a fading Hollywood movie star all await the arrival of a missing part for a flying boat and a journey that will take them into the realm of myth.

But if Jack is ever to see his mother again, he has to stop them…