I didn't read the first book, but I don't think that mattered despite the frequent references to it - it's written into this book as if the author is the main character. This is another fun take on a traditional mystery trope, Murder on the Orient Express. I enjoy the meta mystery elements and found the characters enjoyable to spend a book with. ( )

I don't mind an author telling me that he's aware he's writing for readers, but in this book, it was done often, and often annoyingly. I gave in to the temptation to buy this book at retail price when I saw it in my local bookstore (99.9 percent of the books I buy are at used prices), and that was fun and impulsive, but I regret doing it because I won't read the book again. I liked his storytelling style; it really pulled me along; but there were two scenes that were ridiculously over the top. So ... don't regret reading it (though I do regret paying retail), and while I wasn't completely satisfied, I do find myself wanting to read the one before it - a title something like 'Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone.' But this time, I'll borrow it from the library! ( )

This is ok. The plot is over complicated. I found the style of narrating the book writing process as part of the plot to be an interesting idea in the first book. In this one, its just annoying. ( )

After the terrifying events the previous year, Ernest Cunningham has written a book and now he has been invited to take part in a Crime Writers Festival. The bonus is that it is a three-day luxury trip on The Ghan, a train from Darwin to Adelaide. Ernest boards hopefully but he finds his fellow authors quite unpleasant and there are obviously tensions. When a best-selling writer is murdered Ernest finds himself at the centre of a mystery again.
This time Stevenson's focus turns to homage of 'Murder on the Orient Express' and it's great! The detection is suitable opaque, the plot nicely twisty and our anti-hero quite engaging. Essentially this is a book which updates Golden Age writing and plot construction with a modern and very humorous attitude. ( )

First sentence:
Hi ,
It's a hard no on the prologue, I'm afraid. I know it's the done thing in crime novels, to hook the reader in and all that, but it just feels a bit cheap here. I know how to do it, of course, the scene you want me to write.

Premise/plot: A handful of mystery writers board a train on their way to the Australian Mystery Writers' Festival. But not everyone who boards the train exits the train....still breathing. Hence, everyone on this train is a suspect.

Ernest Cunningham is the main character "author" who wrote the book Everyone In My Family Killed Someone based on a horrific family reunion. He's working on a second novel, hopefully a book not based on his personal life, but events of the train are proving challenging. If he survives the trip, then a second book has conveniently unfolded right when he needs it. (Though is that a motive for crime???)

Most all of the characters are new in this one--with the exception of his love interest.

My thoughts: I absolutely loved Everyone In My Family Killed Someone. I thought Ernest Cunningham was a delightful narrator. I liked the gimmick of it, the premise of it. In theory, I like the premise of this one as well. In theory. I didn't quite love this one. I'm not sure if I just wasn't in the right mood for it, or, if the first book was just better. I still like the main character, and, sometimes with detective novels, each mystery has a little bit of hit or miss to it. Some you just enjoy more than others all the while loving the detective character at the center of the novel. ( )