THE MOQUETTE MYSTERY

Andrew Martin

How can solving a murder hinge on identifying the pattern on a piece of cloth?

And why was the clue sent to the police before the murder had been committed?

The detective who shows up in London’s Quarmby and Bates department store is eager to be shot of the case. For the young May Mitton in Fabrics and Furnishings, newly down from the North, though, this coarse but rather beautifully patterned scrap appears to come from a train – but which, and where . . .?

May’s investigations take her out into Metroland, to Oxford, back to her home town of Halifax and the Isle of Wight – and into the mysterious world of moquette, with its celebrity designers and its impossible complexity of railway companies and carriage classes.

Set just before the war in the heyday of department stores and Art Deco, The Moquette Mystery is a crime thriller as colourful and summery as its elusive pattern.

BY THE AUTHOR OF SEATS OF LONDON

PRE-ORDER A COPY NOW FOR SEPTEMBER PUBLICATION:

September 2025              

192pp

£9.99

198 x 129 mm

Paperback

978 1 0685162 4 5

Crime fiction

Andrew Martin is the author of Seats of London, the Jim Stringer crime novels and, most recently, To the Sea by Train.