Chapter 10: Everyone on This Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson
A delightful and wickedly clever novel (despite the body count)
Let’s get this out of the way up front: Everyone on This Train is a Suspect is a sequel. And while I recommend its Knives Out-style predecessor, you don’t need to read it before enjoying this.
That's partly due to Stevenson’s unique meta writing style. Book one, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone, is fiction written as memoir. In this sequel, main character Ernest is promoting that memoir (about his experience surviving a serial killer). Both are compulsively readable and fun – if such a thing can be said of a book where several people are murdered.
Of course, the natural comparison is Murder on the Orient Express and it’s pretty spot on. Stevenson turns the iconic Christie story (and Golden Age style) into a witty satire of crime writing.
The story moves at an enjoyable pace and it truly does feel like you’re along for the ride (both in terms of the actual train and the whole catching a killer thing). It’s the kind of murder mystery that feels enjoyable to read, rather than creepy or upsetting.
There are plenty of twists in the tale – despite Ernest pulling back the curtains on mystery writing and giving you all the clues you need to solve it before he reveals the killer on the page. Truthfully, I’m a little too lazy for that and instead just enjoyed the self-referential style as it all unfolded.
Everyone on This Train is a Suspect is a clever and compelling mystery – a sequel that can almost stand alone and the perfect read for fans of witty crime novels. A short and sweet review from me because this is a book you just need to experience for yourself.
Thank you to the publisher for providing a copy of the book for review.
If you like this…
Only Murders in the Building offers up a similar comic crime vibe across several seasons on Disney+
Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club is one of my favourites, with a tongue-in-cheek tone and characters you can’t help but love
The Appeal by Janice Hallett also feels like cosy, small-town crime but with an intriguing ‘found documents’ format that plays with expectations of sleuthing novels