Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect
Ratings45
Average rating4.2
15
Ratings45
Average rating4.2
From the bestselling author of Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, a fiendishly fun locked room (train) murder mystery that "offers a tip of the hat to the great Agatha Christie novel while at the same time being a modern reinvention of it" (Nita Prose) -- perfect for fans of Richard Osman and Anthony Horowitz
When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn’t pan out.
The program is a who’s who of crime writing royalty:
the debut writer (me!)
the forensic science writer
the blockbuster writer
the legal thriller writer
the literary writer
the psychological suspense writer
But when one of us is murdered, the remaining authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime.
Of course, we should also know how to commit one.
How can you find a killer when all the suspects know how to get away with murder?
Featured Prompt
2,708 booksWhen you think back on every book you've ever read, what are some of your favorites? These can be from any time of your life – books that resonated with you as a kid, ones that shaped your personal...
Featured Series
3 primary booksErnest Cunningham is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2022 with contributions by Benjamin Stevenson.
Reviews with the most likes.
I really liked this one - engaging mystery, humour, and some delightfully frustrating characters. It didn't quite have the emotional impact of the first book, but I guess that makes sense in the context. Though I did have fun exploring Ernest's relationship and seeing just how how much of an idiot he is - very enjoyable.
Unfortunately, like the first one, I found there to be way too much info dumped on me right at the end. Too much for me to ever guess it all, even if I can guess whodunnit based off vibes. Which is kind of annoying, because Stevenson is good at drip feeding clues - I just wish we got more of those big revelations throughout the book, so it wasn't such a leap to the solve at the end.
I hope he writes another one.
They say a sequel is very tricky because is hard to be as good as the first. So happy to see that this book is at least as good as the first, or maybe even better.
That's the good stuff right there. I think I remember having a similar experience with the first book in
this series, that I was enjoying myself riding along with the attempted mystery solving, then got a bit
iffy in the reveal, as there were certain things I'd already guessed, and then other things I hadn't had a clue about that were just barely believable, and
then it was how the book actually ended that settled it for me, in focusing back on the characters
and their relationships, experiences. Stevenson provides an empathetic, yet all-too-human perspective in Ernest and it makes all the difference in having him as the narrator. Sometimes the interpersonal drama leans thriller-esque, but I know I'll always have one character I actually like. Though that other theme running through the book leading to the epilogue is what truly made it for me. As always I'll caveat that I'm a fairly gullible, easy going mystery reader so those in it primarily for the puzzles may not be as entertained as I was.
I recognize that it's a personal preference that violence against women, SA, not be a plot point, even though elements of the scenario are tragically similar to real life publicized accounts. In this sense the formula and tropes that Stevenson plays with may work in my favour. Having used it so prominently once, it's unlikely to return in the next book. I look forward to continuing in the series, hopefully the author plans to do so!
I think it is generally hard to write a very good sequel. Especially for a book that is quite inventive, funny and a very good mystery all in one. So, I was wary of this sequel and I was more critical with this book while I read it.
Suffice to say, I absolutely loved this one.
Ernest Cunningham is back. He lays out the rules. He hands us all the clues. And is more than happy for us to solve it with him.
Ernest - I mean Benjamin Stevenson - has given us a lovely new narrative that builds on the previous story, with a fresh new mystery and new characters. He utilises the classic mystery tropes and, just as the previous one, puts his own twist on them. There are enough red herrings to go around, but one thing is for sure, Stevenson provides us with all the clues necessary to solve the case.
(Let me say, I did think I solved the case, but as he was doing the explaining, I realised I had gotten it all wrong and had called for the red herrings.)
