Arthur V. Sellwood

[3] In addition to working as a journalist,[3] Sellwood produced a number of popular non-fiction books, specialising in adapting the recollections of twentieth century naval officers.

Just weeks later he happened to meet Captain J. Armstrong White who had been a captive on Atlantis after she sank his ship City of Bagdad and who Sellwood discovered was in contact with Mohr and Rogge.

[7] His other non-fiction works included Black Avalanche (1960) (with Mary), the story of the Knockshinnoch pit disaster, The Red-Gold Flame (1966) about the Irish 1916 Easter Rising, and Police Strike, 1919 (1978).

Set during the era when trains had sealed compartments without communicating corridors, meaning that murderers and their victims might be confined together between stations, it has been placed by Michael Cook within the genre of "locked room" crime literature.

[9] It was conceived just after the end of the Second World War when Mary was sent to interview a Miss Pill, a relative of Isaac Gold who had been murdered on the Brighton line in 1881 by Percy Lefroy Mapleton, but the decision to finally write the book only came after a "violent incident on a night train" in the 1970s.