Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone<\/em>, an international bestseller, soon to be an HBO series.<\/p>\nThe first-person narrator of that book and this one, its sequel, is Ernest Cunningham. Cunningham reminds those who read the first book and informs those who did not that he \u00a0\u00a0used to write books about how to write mysteries, drawing on the wisdom of Christie and other authors from the Golden Age of murder mysteries.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t worry if you didn\u2019t read the first Ernest Cunningham book. I didn\u2019t, but it\u2019s now high on my must-read list. Cunningham, of course, is aware of the challenges of writing sequels and carefully tells us just what we need to know about the time when a family reunion turned deadly and, amid all the subsequent media attention, he decided to tell the story in a memoir of sorts.<\/p>\n
Now Cunningham has a hefty advance to write a second book, but he\u2019s having a rough time getting started. For his first book, he essentially just told readers what happened in real life. For this second book, he\u2019s supposed to use his imagination and creativity.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, he\u2019s been invited to a writers\u2019 convention held aboard the Ghan, a train that takes tourists between Darwin on Australia\u2019s northern coast and Adelaide on the southern coast, traveling through the heart of the desert. He and his girlfriend, Juliette, hope that traveling with successful authors will help get him started on his novel.<\/p>\n
What happens instead is that, once again, real life (and real death) provides the story.<\/p>\n
Early in the train journey, one of the featured writers is murdered. The train\u2019s stops for sightseeing are canceled. Cunningham and the other writers think they ought to be able to figure out the identity of the killer. They also realize that the same skills that help them solve murder mysteries could enable any one of them to be a crafty murderer. Cunningham figures the only way to remove himself as a suspect is to find the real killer.<\/p>\n
So Stevenson writes a mystery novel that Cunningham presents as a true story, one that has ended before he writes the book. That metafiction approach makes it possible for Stevenson to have Cunningham step back frequently from the action and mystery and talk with his readers about the rules of writing classic mysteries, poking a little fun at them even as he admires them. As his character talks about the rules and offers hints about how to solve the mystery, Stevenson\u2019s background as a comedian is evident in Cunningham\u2019s dry humor. There\u2019s also humor in the way Cunningham sometimes blunders, draws the wrong conclusions and puts himself in danger. He’s certainly no Poirot.<\/p>\n
The asides about the rules of mystery writers, the clues, the humor \u2013 in the hands of a lesser writer, this approach might become too gimmicky and annoying. Stevenson gets it just right. Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect<\/em> is an outstanding mystery novel, complete with twists, turns and surprises. And yes, it follows the rules, even as it makes us laugh.<\/p>\n\n
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Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson EVERYONE ON THIS TRAIN IS A SUSPECT. By Benjamin Stevenson. Mariner Books. 336 pages. $30. Benjamin Stevenson has a lot of nerve. It\u2019s not every writer who would be so bold as to produce a modern spin on Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie\u2019s masterpiece starring the inimitable Hercule […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14],"tags":[1380,1379,1378],"class_list":["post-3180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mysteries","category-thriller-suspense","tag-australian-mystery","tag-benjamin-stevenson","tag-everyone-on-this-train-is-a-suspect"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3182,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3180\/revisions\/3182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>But then Stevenson is not your ordinary author. He has a second career as a successful stand-up comic, and he puts his sense of humor to good use in his new book Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect<\/em>.<\/p>\n