ROMANTIC notions of a cosy white Christmas in December 1954 for the tight-knit community along a secluded railway branch line are brutally dashed by the actions of a satanic Santa whose deathly season's greetings soon send a tragic shockwave into the wider world. Already grappling with a sudden family tragedy, Inspector Charles Vignoles more than ever needs his trusty deputy, Sergeant Trinder, and their team in the British Railways Detective Department, to unravel a complicated murder mystery with repercussions involving a psychopathic duo whose attention no right-minded person would want to attract. Unfortunately, that's just what a young single mother and her little daughter unwittingly do as the action speeds along the former Great Central Railway line from rural Leicestershire into the urban bustle of London, Liverpool and Manchester. It's not only the poor rabbits in the surrounding East Midlands countryside, blighted by a savage outbreak of myxomatosis, who wait almost paralysed in fear of what the future holds... As always, Stephen Done creates a pitch-perfect background of the tough post-war years in which the warmth of community well-being jostles with the growing sense of social claustrophobia for equal billing - and steam power was still king of the rails. This is book nine in an on-going series about Detective Inspector Charles Vignoles and his team in the fictional British Railways Detective Department, based in Leicester Central railway station in Leicester. The first book 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' is set in 1946, and with each book, the years advance with the corresponding changes in society as the bleak post-war austerity slowly relaxes and the railways try to modernise. The series has gathered a strong and loyal following, al enjoying the gripping storylines and the plausible and atmospheric settings that range from the East Midlands area around Leicester to London Marylebone Nottingham, the oddly secluded railway town of Woodford Halse and even the seaside sunshine of New Brighton in Wirral and Trieste in former Yugoslavia!