Review by Booklist Review
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (2023) was a delight, a smart mystery with a genuinely surprising story and a narrator who spoke directly to the reader. In Stevenson's latest, which can be read as a stand-alone or a sequel, Ernest Cunningham, the author of guides to writing crime fiction, is invited to attend an event hosted by the Australian Mystery Writers' Society. The gathering of up-and-comers and genre stars takes place aboard a train in a deliberate nod to Murder on the Orient Express. When one writer is murdered, the rest instantly become suspects, because who better to get away with murder than someone who executes (fictional) murders for a living? Like the first book, this offers a perfectly structured and suspenseful story, a cast of enjoyable characters, and in Ernest, a narrator who knows just what to reveal and what to keep hidden. Readers who wondered whether Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone was lightning in a bottle, whether the author could recreate that feeling of freshness, now have their answer, and it's a resounding, "Yes."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Stevenson's brilliant and creative second closed-circle mystery featuring author Ernest Cunningham (after Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone) toys with golden age mystery tropes while delivering its own hugely satisfying whodunit. Cunningham's published account of the murders detailed in the previous book has netted him an invitation to the 50th Australian Mystery Writers' Festival. He's been asked, along with five much-better-known authors, to be a panelist aboard the Ghan, a luxury train whose route bisects the Australian desert. Soon after the journey starts, one of the writers turns up dead, and each of the train's other panelists--including Cunningham himself--becomes both suspect and sleuth. As the investigation unfolds, Stevenson plays scrupulously fair: as in the previous book, Cunningham addresses readers directly, promising "to be that rarity in modern crime novels: a reliable narrator." Even before the first murder, he reveals that a comma will be a crucial clue, and that there will be more than one victim. Dashes of humor (while introducing his fellow panelists, Cunningham pokes wicked fun at the publishing industry) light the way as Stevenson charges toward the deliciously clever final reveal. This is another triumph from a gifted genre specialist. Agent: Pippa Mason, Curtis Brown. (Jan.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The 50th annual Australian Mystery Writers' Festival, taking place aboard a long-distance train bound from Darwin to Adelaide, is punctuated by snarky dialogue, murder, and a zillion inventive misdirections. "Why [am] I here?" wonders Ernest Cunningham, whose struggles to write his second book are interrupted by his invitation as a headliner at the festival-on-wheels, which will turn into the setting of his new book. Thriller writer S.F. Majors, former forensic pathologist Alan Royce, and artsy one-named Wolfgang are all much better known than he is. So is Lisa Fulton, even though she hasn't published a novel in 20 years. And of course Henry McTavish, the bestselling creator of Detective Morbund, is in a different league altogether. After making a series of disingenuous promises about future developments--since he's narrating the tale in the first person, for instance, he will definitely survive, and the killer's name will be mentioned exactly 106 more times going forward--Ernest gets down to business with a combination of zeal and obliviousness. True to his word, he chronicles more than one murder, reveals a multitude of other felonies from burglary to rape, links the current mystery to a much older case, and sets the stage for a series of escalating reveals, one of them interrupted so many times that the self-anointed detective complains, "There's not normally this much heckling in a denouement." Stevenson rivals his golden age models in his willingness to sprinkle every scene with clever clues, outdoes them in setting up a dazzling series of false conclusions, and leaves them in the dust for modern-day fans with an appetite for self-reflexiveness. No, it's not for everyone--but if you want to read a supercharged meta-pastiche like this, this is exactly the one to read. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
