A Sterling Mystery:
Vultures In The Skyby Todd Downing
Scott Adlerberg revisits the classic mystery masterpiece Vultures In The Sky By Todd Downing.
As esteemed a tradition in mystery stories as the country house murder or the locked room puzzle is a plot involving a crime committed, or hatched, on a train. Examples abound, from Emile Zola’s 1890 novel La Bete humaine to the Golden Age era books written by railway engineer Freeman Wills Croft.
Dorothy Hughes did one mid twentieth century with Dread Journey, as did Patricia Highsmith with Strangers on a Train, and who but a friend of Miss Marple’s would see, looking out her train compartment window, a man strangling a woman on a passing train? That’s The 4:50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie, and Christie of course wrote the most famo
