Everyone On This Train is a Suspect

Everyone on this Train is a Suspect / Benjamin Stevenson
New York : Mariner Books, ©2023
320 p.

The second book in the Ernest Cunningham series, this follows the same basic outline as the first one: it's a locked room mystery, with a murder and multiple suspects. Stevenson is once again playing with Golden Age mystery tropes in a modern way, and I thought it was clever and very amusing too. 

Just like the first book, this one has Ernest talking to the reader and apparently writing the book as we are reading it. He throws out tons of references to mystery writing norms, the events of the past book (on the strength of which he has been invited as a speaker on this crime writing train festival), and, gentle reader, also to Goodreads. It was hilarious and snarky and I laughed at it a lot. 

As the story begins, Ernest and his girlfriend Julia (the ski resort owner from the last book) are boarding a train for a crime writing festival being held aboard, featuring 6 writers. Unfortunately for them, the keynote speaker shortly bites it, and they are all suspects. But they are also all crime writers who should be expected to know how to get away with murder. 

Ernest digs up dark secrets from everyone's pasts, suspects the wrong people, makes blunders, gets into a car chase across the outback, once again nearly dies, and finds out that he might not have the Main Character energy that he thinks he does. 

So many threads in this one, so many potential unravellings, but it ends with one I didn't see coming. Mystery readers who love black humour, and a narrator who is breaking all sorts of narrative rules while reflecting on the mystery genre itself, plus unusual and entertaining Australian settings, are strongly suggested to give this series a go. Lots of fun with tangled clues to try to figure out before Ernest does.