Everyone on This Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson
Publication Date: January 30, 2024 (US)
Summary from NetGalley:
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?
ARC provided by Mariner Books via NetGalley for an honest review.
Confession:
This second book in a fun cozy mystery series is just as good if not slightly better than the first. There is quite a lot to love about this one, the locked door (or train) aspect of the mystery, all of the quirky characters, the twists and motives of all of the suspects, and finally the Australian outback setting. This was a really hard book to put down and one that had me guessing almost to the end.
Ernest is back and having a tough time. He has published his first book about the events that happened at his family reunion which sold well in true crime circles. He is now working on his second book, a fictional mystery and having a tough time. He is excited to be on this train with all of these other writers but is also somewhat intimidated by them, until one of them is murdered. He then starts to feel in his element and works hard to solve this new mystery before the bodies start to stack up again. Ernest shows some growth in this story, as he overcomes his insecurities as an author and some of his survivors guilt from the first book. I love how he breaks the fourth wall to give us hints as to how mysterys work and how authors work as well. He also has a very dry sense of humor which I always appreciate in characters.
Everyone else on the train is pretty well fleshed out. There are a few characters that are not, but they end up not being important to the mystery. We again have a cast of suspects that are not very likable. They are all keeping secrets, and go to great lengths to keep them from coming to the surface even after the first murder. I love how all of the authors think that they have solved it or think that they could have done it better.
The mystery itself is well done. All of the suspects, even the characters you know couldn’t have done it, certainly had motive to commit the murders. It was great fun trying to figure it all out with Ernest, and to root for your favorite characters to either be guilty or maybe not. There are some great twists, and even an action scene or two to spice things up. The pacing is fairly steady, but you are so interested in the story that you are never bored.
One of my dreams is to one day visit Australia, and if I ever do make it there, I will have to see about taking a trip on the Ghan. It sounds wonderful and a great way to see the Outback. But hopefully there will be no murders on board if I do. If you enjoyed the first book in this series, you will certainly get a kick out of this one. I look forward to seeing more of these books in the future.
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