Crime on the rails

Hornsea is not an area well-served by trains, though go back a few decades and things were very different. It had its own station bringing holidaymakers aplenty.

This lack of rail track doesn’t keep trains out of Hornsea writers’ books. The First Hull Trains company, running services between Hull and London, recently shared a Facebook post about the Annie Raymond mysteries – a series of private investigator / police procedural thrillers that began life on board a train.

The first book in the series sees Annie arrive on one of their trains. She comes to the city reluctantly and without expectations, simply hoping to make the best of things, but mirroring the deceptively calm sheen on the Humber estuary on a summer day, she finds treacherous currents just below the surface ready to suck her under and never let her go.

It takes two whole books before Annie leaves the area, and when she does, it’s on with the backpack and on to a train again. When she makes another visit in a later book, a more prosperous Annie comes by car – but even more reluctantly this time because now she knows what to expect.

It's interesting to see these things pop up - like the Annie books on Hull Trains' Facebook page. Has anyone else examples of their books cropping up in unexpected places?