Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect

- There's no doubt Benjamin Stevenson is a brilliant comic writer. His gift shines through on virtually every page. 

- Ernest Cunningham, the fictional author of the best-selling Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone, is writing his follow-up Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect. Ernest continually breaks the fourth wall, telling us all what he's doing and why, which makes it so charming. 

- The train is the Ghan, running from Darwin to Adelaide, and the luxury carriage is hosting 'The Australian Mystery Writers' Festival' featuring six internationally successful authors. (Note to ed: there should be no comma after Writers). A couple of murders take place. 

- The book has a serious problem however. It's hard-going. The story is clotted, the narrator fussy, and he drowns the reader in so much detail the experience is like drowning in mud.  

- It gets really tedious and alienating towards the end, as the incestuous, mind-boggling connections between all the characters are revealed. Our omniscient, first-person narrator somehow knows everything, indulging in his own cleverness. 

- But he does satirise the mystery thriller genre exceptionally well, particularly the ‘butler-dunnit’ model. 

- And I must say he portrays the regular modus operandi of the publishing industry and its many players very accurately. The Oxford Comma also plays a part!

- But, all in all....meh!