Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

Narrator Barton Welch delivers another rollicking portrayal of writer and accidental sleuth Ernest “Ern” Cunningham, whom listeners first met in Stevenson’s hilarious Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone. With his incredibly patient girlfriend Juliette in tow, Ern speeds across the countryside aboard the luxurious Ghan, the Australian Outback’s version of the Orient Express, on which he is serving as a panelist in the 50th annual Australian Mystery Writers’ Festival. Soon after the 1,846-mile journey begins, a star mystery writer drops dead, just days after giving most of the other panelists’ books devastating one-word reviews. As he did in his first Ernest Cunningham mystery, Stevenson has Ern break the fourth wall and actively write the novel as listeners are experiencing it—a wonderfully interactive narrative structure of which Welch takes full advantage. His expert pacing keeps the twisty plot on the tracks, allowing listeners to sit back and enjoy their madcap journey alongside the snarky cast of backstabbing characters. In a sweet wrap-up, narrator Megan Smart, as Ern’s much better half, Juliette, handles the epilogue.