SIX WRITERS. FIVE DETECTIVES. FOUR DAYS. THREE WEAPONS. TWO MURDERS. ONE TRAIN . . .

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, six authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime.

Or commit one . . .

But how do you catch a killer, when all your suspects know how to get away with murder?

Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect is the second book in the Ernest Cunningham series following last year’s Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone which I did read and review, just not on the blog as it was when I was taking a break.

Following his harrowing escape and successful identification of the killer during his family’s mountain retreat holiday Ernest finds himself thrust into another sinister scenario. His literary account of the prior ordeal earns him an invitation to a prestigious crime writers’ event aboard the Ghan (think Orient Express in the Australian outback).

It would seem that Ernest just can’t get a break from murders though as there is a killer aboard the Ghan, this is the recount of that journey.

The first thing that you will notice when you open this book is that the writing style is unlike most novels and it may surprise you unless you have read the first book, which you don’t have to do to understand this one. The author engages directly with the audience, explaining the process of writing, how the plot will go, etc.

The story is a good read. It felt a little slow in places and some parts I was unsure why they were added but then the author does tell us at the beginning how many words he needs in each part of the book and some felt like fillers to hit those numbers.

There were a few shocking moments and a major one I did not see coming, alongside a few red herrings. The characters played their parts well, some you will love, others you will loathe with a passion. The book is certainly amusing in parts and very over the top in others.

Overall, Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect is a decent whodunnit. It has been very cleverly written and the surprises just kept on coming. Although set in the modern day it did have an old-fashioned golden-age mystery feel to it, which I enjoyed.

Benjamin Stevenson is an award-winning stand-up comedian and author. His first novel, Greenlight, was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award for Best Debut Crime Fiction, and his second novel, Either Side of Midnight, was shortlisted for the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Original Paperback.

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone, his third novel, was a huge bestseller and has so far been sold in twenty-four territories around the world. It will soon be adapted into a major HBO TV series.

Benjamin has sold out live shows from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival all the way to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and has appeared on ABC TV, Channel 10 and The Comedy Channel.