Canon Victor Lorenzo Whitechurch was a celebrated crime writer and an expert railway enthusiast. He wrote a large number of crime short stories set in the golden age of Britain's railways, and a selection of the best of these was published in 1912 as Thrilling Stories of the Railway.

A faultless constructor of mystery plots, Whitechurch was also one of the first writers to make a proper study of police procedure; the hero of many of these stories, Thorpe Hazell, was described by Ellery Queen as the first 'speciality' detective, and was greatly admired by Dorothy L. Sayers. All the stories in this collection, many of which are tales of adventure and action as much as of detection, are linked to the railway, and have titles redolent of the Edwardian period, such as 'The Affair of the Corridor Express', 'The Affair of the German Dispatch-Box' and 'How the Bishop Kept his Appointment'.