wildheart_baby 's review for:

Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson

5.0

adventurous challenging funny informative mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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After surviving a murder spree, Ernest Cunningham is part of a literary festival on a train with a group of authors, to talk about their work, Ernest has only published one book, and is trying to come up with his next book, a work of fiction. As the journey goes on, he starts to investigate what he thinks might be a murder, and it turns out, is exactly that. Can he solve the murder and get a new best seller out of the whole situation.

This story is so very good, and very meta from the prologue, talking about prologue's being played out, to talking about the structure of a mystery novel and how an author sets one out to the nearest ten thousand words, to talking about all the tropes that usually happen in murder mysteries, whilst the trope is playing out, and even telling the reader they'll have given the name of the murderer, by the number of times they mention other characters by name.

There are so many red herrings and twists that it kept me guessing right till the end. Though Ernest is sympathetic in terms of how some of the other writers look down on him, he's also a bit self-centred, which culminates in his girlfriend Juliette leaving the festival early. 

Overall, this was a really good story that I thoroughly enjoyed.