It's 1872 and the Katy Railroad is hell-bent on laying the first set of tracks through Indian Territory, but things have stalled out at Ironhead Station. It's a man-a-day, end-of-the-tracks boom camp, meant to live loud and die young. The railroad hired a new chief of police, but the odds are three-to-one he'll be dead by the end of the week. If Morgan Clyde can out-think the smart ones, out-lie the sneaky ones, and outshoot the deadly ones, he'll...

"When Robert Pomeroy, a young undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, finds a letter slipped under his door in the early hours of a rainy day, he flies into a panic. Hastily readying himself and dashing off a few lines for the porter to summon his friend Nicholas Thorpe, he hurries to the railway station. But he doesn't reach his destination alive. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are called upon to investigate this tragedy on the railway....

"On a dark, brooding evening on the Isle of Wight, Agnes Raybould and her companion find themselves an empty first-class compartment on the train. But before long a middle-aged man, clearly in high spirits after dining at his club, joins them, and begins a conversation. His name is Edwin Blanchard - and within moments of the train leaving the station, Agnes and her accomplice strangle him. Detective Inspector Colbeck is called to Scotland Yard immediately...