Everyone on this Train is a Suspect

“It’s not the writing that tells the story, it’s the reading.”

The very minute I’d finished Stevenson’s previous book, I googled his name to see if there was more, and was delighted to find this sequel title. This time, protagonist Ernie Cunningham is breaking his own rules. In crime fiction, there must only be one Holmes, he may have a sidekick or Watson, but the audience can only follow one detective. When Ernie gets involved in a murder on a cross-country train filled with famous crime-fiction writers, he has to deal with the other chefs in the kitchen trying to solve the case as well as a murderer aboard.

The knowingness and self-awareness of this book is one of the things that I love about Stevenson’s - or Ernie’s - writing. He deals with what it is to be famous and to be a person who relies on tragedy to make a living. There’s also the now-usual meta-analysis of the crime fiction structure - I mean it’s a murder on a train, come on! The characters are well-drawn and distinct - I often find ensembles like this hard to keep track of, but these were perfect, and I never felt lost about where on the train we were or what the layout was (though if I did there’s a map in the introduction).

I absolutely flew through this book after the first one, I enjoyed it so much, and the pair together make for a terrific story. There’s some good callbacks to the predecessor too. I only hope there’ll be a third soon.