Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect: A Locked Room Murder Mystery Aboard a Train (The Ernest Cunningham Mysteries Book 2)
From the bestselling author of Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, a fiendishly fun locked room (train) murder mystery in the spirit of Murder on the Orient Express. With Ernest Cunningham, “Stevenson has brought a modern-day Poirot to the mystery scene”(Michelle Carpenter).
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?
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Community Reviews
Imagine being invited to a crime-writing festival on a luxurious train and thinking, "Ah yes, this will be the perfect place to get some inspiration for my next book!" Turns out, the only inspiration this author got was that you really, really, really shouldn’t expect a relaxing trip when your fellow passengers are crime-writing royalty. As the titular debut writer (yes, that would be our narrator), I had high hopes. Instead, one of the authors gets actually murdered, and suddenly, it's less "peaceful getaway" and more "everyone on this train could be a murderer—including me." Whoops.
The plot is a delightful mix of dark comedy and tense mystery. The crime-writing professionals are, of course, extremely qualified to catch a killer—except they’re also extremely qualified to commit a murder. So, naturally, they all start turning on each other in true writerly fashion, trying to outwit, outsmart, and outthink their fellow authors. There’s a lot of “well, I could totally pull that off if I needed to” moments, and I honestly found myself wondering if these folks were just practicing for the next big idea for their own books. It’s the kind of story where every suspicion feels like a well-crafted plot twist, and I had no idea who to trust by the time the final reveal came. Seriously, they could’ve all done it.
The book isn't a deep, life-changing experience. It’s more like a whodunit with a side of "well, it’s not really about who did it, it's about how ridiculous this whole thing is." But that’s what makes it so fun. If you’re looking for a highly intellectual mystery with profound societal commentary, well, you might want to skip this one. But if you want to laugh at the absurdity of crime writers solving a crime they should have seen coming? Welcome aboard, my friend.
This book is a hilarious, twisty, and wonderfully ridiculous train ride of a book. It’s lighthearted and full of sly humor, but it also knows how to keep you guessing. Plus, if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be trapped in a train with a bunch of very talented people who are all secretly suspects, well, here’s your chance to live vicariously through some very competent, yet utterly ridiculous, detectives. Highly recommend—just don’t read it on an actual train, because it might make you second-guess everyone in the dining car.
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