28th December 2024

In this self-described “Holiday Special”, we revisit Ernest as he receives a concerning phone call and is dragged off to another grisly murder scene.

I really enjoy the first person narratives of this series, which refuses to take itself very seriously while dealing with serious subject matter.

It’s a clever mystery with a lot going on and I raced through the novella in two days, despite its suggestion that it could be read over December like an advent calendar.

I wonder if I had gone slower whether I would have worked more out along the way, but the chapters are short and my approach to reading is much more enthusiastic than that when I enjoy something.

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9th March 2024

The classic sequel, in which our protagonist returns to tell another story with a title that tenuously connects it to the first despite not being entirely accurate when it comes to evaluating the plot, wherein only a specific subset of the people on the train some of the time are suspects.

It’s a very clever and very funny narrative, told as our hero is invited to a writer’s convention aboard a train travelling the north-south span of Australia. The mystery is to some extent the classic locked room, where the room is the train.

I do think with the plethora of cosy crime available today that it’s the narrative that has to make it. This is amusingly meta as the detective is a crime writer, and so references all the classic tropes as he goes.

Really good, raced through it, book three is going straight on my list for next year.

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27th November 2022

A book I bought based entirely on the title, this is an Australian novel about a man who’s family have all killed somebody, and we follow the events of their family skiing holiday as he introduces them all to us.

It’s a fun narrative which peels back layer after layer of mystery to reveal more and more about the background to what’s happening, keeping the reader engaged throughout.

I did find that I kept forgetting that the setting was Australia, and having to reset my mental picture.

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