Actually, I'm a Murderer
ISBN: 9781408720110
Description
It is 1973 and the lives of four people are thrown into turmoil when sharing a carriage with an unremarkable little man with glasses, on the night train back to Newcastle. By the end of the following day, one of them will be dead, one will turn blackmailer and another forced to commit a crime. And all of them will be under the astute observation of Aline, the local police officer with her own agenda to fulfil. When the body count begins to rise, the question is: just how many murderers are out there... and who will be the next victim?
Reviewed on 26th April 2026
I picked this up expecting a comic crime caper of some sort. It's not not that, but it's also not really that either in a way that I felt I could continue reading. I got to around page 150.
It's the story of three main characters who meet on/after a train journey in the 70s, all of whom are telling it in first person from the perspective of their older self 50 years later. The chapters rotate through the different narrators in turn. One is an inept actor, one a police officer, and one a contract killer. Two of the three felt unlikable, and that wasn't sufficiently balanced out by the third.
I just struggled to get into it. The narrative never felt like it was going anywhere fun or interesting. The characters almost all felt like victims of circumstance, but not in a way that seemed comedic.
Eventually I had to give up and move on to something I was going to enjoy more.