Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

(Ernest Cunningham #2)

Benjamin Stevenson

For Jerry Kalajian

Life Changer

There must be but one detective—that is, but one protagonist of deduction—one deus ex machina. To bring the minds of three or four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to bear on a problem, is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader. If there is more than one detective the reader doesn’t know who his co-deductor is. It’s like making the reader run a race with a relay team.

Rule 9, S.S. Van Dine’s “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories,” 1928

A sequel is an admission that you’ve been reduced to imitating yourself.

Don Marquis

The Layout of the Ghan

Australian Mystery Writers’ Festival, 50th Anniversary Program

The AMWF extends a very special welcome to our guest of honor: Henry McTavish, globally bestselling author of the Detective Morbund series. “Unputdownable and unbeatable: McTavish is peerless.” New York Times

Ernest Cunningham: Ernest Cunningham’s memoir Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone took us deep into the story of one of Australia’s most notorious serial killers, the Black Tongue. He is currently working on a novel.

Lisa Fulton: Lisa Fulton’s bestselling debut novel The Balance of Justice shook the foundations of crime fiction on release twenty-one years ago with its white-hot rage and brutal truth, and was long-listed for the Justice in Fiction Award, Women’s Prize, 2003. She is currently working on her long-awaited second novel.

S. F. Majors: S. F. Majors’s gripping thrillers have captivated the world with their psychological complexity and hair-raising twists and turns. Her books include the New York Times

bestselling Twists and Turns, which has been optioned for film by Netflix. Her young adult thriller My Lab Partner Is a Serial Killer is being adapted into a Broadway musical. She grew up rereading the only three books in her tiny town’s school library, and now lives in the Blue Mountains with her partner and two dogs.

Alan Royce: Alan Royce is the author of the Dr. Jane Black series, comprising eleven novels and three novellas. A former forensic pathologist before being catapulted to crime-writing stardom, he brings his expertise in morgues and autopsies to the page. “Gritty, real and uncompromising. One to watch.” Time, 2011

Wolfgang: Winner, Commonwealth Book Prize 2012; short-listed, Bookseller’s Favorites Award 2012; short-listed, Goodreads Readers’ Choice, Literary Fiction, 2012; short-listed, Best of Amazon 2012; short-listed, Justice in Fiction Award, Women’s Prize (special exemption granted), 2003; long-listed, Miles Franklin Award 2015; long-listed, Independent Library Choice Awards 2015; Archibald Packing Room Prize subject 2018; Honorary Mention: International Poetry Prize, Oceanic Region, 2020. His next project is an interactive art project titled The Death of Literature.

Prologue

From: [e-mail]

To: @penguinrandomhouse.com.au

Subject: Prologue

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. An omniscient eye would survey the cabin’s destruction, lingering on signs of a struggle: the strewn sheets, the upturned mattress, the bloodied handprint on the bathroom door. Add in fleeting glimpses of clues—three words hastily scrawled in blue ink on a manuscript, at odds with the crimson, dripping tip of the murder weapon—just enough to tantalize but nondescript enough not to spoil.

The final image would be of the body. Faceless, of course. You’ve got to keep the victim from the reader at the start. Maybe a sprinkle of some little detail, a personal item like a piece of clothing (the blue scarf, or something, I’m not sure) that the reader can watch for in the buildup.