Karen
The Orient Express instantly conjures up images of luxurious travel, fine dining, people dressed in their very best, quiet and attentive staff gliding unseen and unremarked through carriages, Inspector Hercule Poirot and 12. Always 12 people.
And so it is with FIVE FOUND DEAD in which one imagines author Sulari Gentill had an enormous amount of fun constructing a story that's partly a hat tip to Agatha Christie's well known novel, and the entire golden age of mystery writing.
In this outing the 12 are the "Bar Council", a group of passengers pulled together by their backgrounds - law enforcement, private investigators, spies, a lawyer and her brother the crime writer. They are called upon by the train manager when a compartment is discovered one morning, empty of its occupant but covered in blood. Of course it's a train so that compartment will be close to somebody, but it's the lawyer and her brother Meredith and Joe - the "main characters" of this outing for want of a better description, and a recently retired French policeman who have the "honour" of being in the cabins either side of the crime scene. As the "Council" convenes to try to solve the mystery of the missing man, and what the crime scene means, a dangerous new COVID variant has been discovered, and two carriages are quarantined from the rest of the train, which also finds itself stranded between France and Italy as authorities react (badly) to this biothreat.
Full Review on my Website
Originally posted at www.austcrimefiction.org.
The Orient Express instantly conjures up images of luxurious travel, fine dining, people dressed in their very best, quiet and attentive staff gliding unseen and unremarked through carriages, Inspector Hercule Poirot and 12. Always 12 people.
And so it is with FIVE FOUND DEAD in which one imagines author Sulari Gentill had an enormous amount of fun constructing a story that's partly a hat tip to Agatha Christie's well known novel, and the entire golden age of mystery writing.
In this outing the 12 are the "Bar Council", a group of passengers pulled together by their backgrounds - law enforcement, private investigators, spies, a lawyer and her brother the crime writer. They are called upon by the train manager when a compartment is discovered one morning, empty of its occupant but covered in blood. Of course it's a train so that compartment will be close to somebody, but it's the lawyer and her brother Meredith and Joe - the "main characters" of this outing for want of a better description, and a recently retired French policeman who have the "honour" of being in the cabins either side of the crime scene. As the "Council" convenes to try to solve the mystery of the missing man, and what the crime scene means, a dangerous new COVID variant has been discovered, and two carriages are quarantined from the rest of the train, which also finds itself stranded between France and Italy as authorities react (badly) to this biothreat.
Full Review on my Website
Originally posted at www.austcrimefiction.org.