The Men Who Robbed the Great Train Robbers
The Men who Robbed the Great Train Robbers is a thriller based on the famous and historic British mail train robbery of 1963. The event has vividly inspired public imagination and even sympathy for the robbers ever since. Lee tells a complex tale of the deceit and double-crosses between the people who set the robbery up and those who carried the plans out.
With immaculate detail we are shown the long-winded preparations for the robbery, the crime itself, the getaway and the investigations to catch the thieves. Lee has done a great deal of research to construct a believable scenario of how it all played out at the time but he has added enough fiction and additional characters to make a well-paced thriller.
The details about the robbery and people behind the scenes were fascinating and were a reminder of the simple methods used in crime investigation at the time. Given the number of people involved in the heist and the aftermath, it is understandable that some characters are less developed, and I would have appreciated a more detailed afterword to explain what was fact or fiction.
For those who know about the event, this is an exciting and speculative read; for those who do not – an inspired thriller.
