Six Brilliant Reads: Train Fiction

Lately there seems to have been an influx of books set on trains. Maybe they have been inspired by classics like Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, or Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Wherever these stories have come from, there’s nothing like the thrill of being stuck in a carriage whooshing through the landscape. You really do get the feeling that anything can happen.

There is certainly an Agatha Christie locked-room vibe in With a Vengeance by Riley Sager. It’s 1954 and Anna Matheson lures six people onto a train travelling from Philadelphia to Chicago, an overnight journey where she plans to confront each of them over what they did to her family. She hopes for confessions and being able to hand them in to the authorities at the end of the journey. When one of the passengers is murdered, it seems someone else is planning a revenge of their own. Non-stop suspense and plenty of twists will keep you turning the pages.

And we’re back on the Orient Express in Five Found Dead by Sulari Gentill. Detective Meredith Penvale and her writer brother Joe have boarded the legendary train to tick off a literary bucket list. Things turn sinister when a virus infiltrates the train and cuts the passengers off from the world. A disappearance and a cabin that looks like a murder scene has Joe and Meredith trying to find answers before they become victims themselves. This is a standalone novel from the author of the popular Rowland Sinclair series.

Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson is the second book in the Ernest Cunningham series that began with Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone. Stevenson’s an Australian author and comedian, and our train this time is The Ghan, which takes you from Adelaide to Darwin. Ernest is on board with a bunch of other crime writers of different genres. When one is murdered, six authors quickly become five detectives. Surely between them one of them can solve the crime. Or commit one!

The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue is a sweeping historical novel about an infamous 1895 disaster at Montparnasse train station in Paris. On board the Paris Express is a wide cast of interesting characters, some of whom hail from as far away as Russia, Algeria, Pennsylvania and Cambodia. There are members of parliament rushing back to Paris to vote, a medical student who suspects a girl may be dying and a secretary trying to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures. On board also is a young anarchist making a terrifying plan.

Play, with Knives by Jeanette Horn is an enormously inventive novel following set designer Edgar who is touring with a theatre troupe by train in the American Midwest. Edgar can’t abide lies, which causes issues with new love interest Ava, who has a secret she fears will ruin their budding relationship. But their playwright Fallon finds inspiration in their dilemma and writes it into their play. A humorous, surreal and poetic novel with a collection of weird and wonderful characters and a story which blurs the line between real and fictional, between art and life.

Not a real train this time, but a creepy toy one which becomes the focus of Whistle by Linwood Barclay. Children’s author Annie Blunt escapes a run of tragedy and scandal to heal in a new town. When her son finds a toy train set in a shed, young Charlie is thrilled. But woken in the night, Annie is sure she can hear what sounds like a train’s whistle. Strange things start happening in their neighbourhood, and grief plays tricks on Annie’s mind. It seems like she has walked out of one nightmare and into another.

Posted by JAM

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