Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect (2023) is Australian writer Benjamin Stevenson’s second mystery novel featuring the adventures of Ernest Cunningham, a writer and amateur detective who uses his own projects as the basis for true crime narratives. In this novel, while Ernest is attending a literary festival onboard a luxury train, a writer and publisher are both murdered.

Stevenson has extensive experience working for publishing houses and, in addition to the two books in the Ernest Cunningham series, has authored three thrillers. His 2019 novel, Greenlight, was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award for First Fiction, and his 2020 novel, Either Side of Midnight, was shortlisted for the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Original Paperback. Unlike his thrillers, however, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone and 2023’s Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect are metafictional comic novels that satirize literary culture and simultaneously pay homage to and parody classic golden-age mysteries. Stevenson is also a highly regarded stand-up comedian, and these two comic novels were so well received that the first was shortlisted for the Dymocks Book of the Year and is being adapted into an HBO series.

This study guide refers to the 2024 Kindle edition of the book.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss murder, sexual assault, and rape.

Plot Summary

Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect is narrated in the first person by its protagonist, Ernest “Ernie” Cunningham, as if it’s one of his books, presenting a true account of the events onboard the train. It begins with front matter that alludes to typical features of golden-age mysteries and an ironic Prologue that satirizes the usual content of prologues. The main story has named parts, and the title of each alludes both to the story’s action and to the work of one of the writers attending the literary festival.

Ernie introduces himself and his girlfriend, Juliette, as they board the Ghan. A welcome gathering is attended by the authors featured in the festival: Ernie, Alan Royce, S. F. Majors, Lisa Fulton, Wolfgang, and Henry McTavish. Several fans and people associated with the literary world also attend: Brooke, a young woman; a couple named Harriet and Jasper; a man named Douglas; Veronica, a critic; Ernie’s agent, Simone; and the head of Gemini Publishing, Wyatt Lloyd. Ernie learns that McTavish left a scathing review of Ernie’s first book, and many of the other authors openly dismiss Ernie’s work.

Ernie joins a tense panel discussion. Wolfgang, the only literary author, expresses disdain for the more commercial authors. Brooke asks McTavish about the upcoming end of his Detective Morbund mysteries; his responses are confusing and vague. Majors asks what inspired the plot of McTavish’s third novel; McTavish deflects the question. When a McTavish blurb is revealed on the cover of Fulton’s new book, Fulton immediately leaves.

Afterward, Ernie meets Douglas, who plies him with questions about his first book and the experience of revenge. Later, learning that Veronica is an important book critic, Ernie is surprised when she praises a new book by Erica Mathison, a sensationalist writer. Ernie then goes to McTavish’s carriage to confront him, but instead he encounters Royce, who is drunk and angry, and escorts him to his room. In the morning, McTavish collapses and dies in front of everyone in the bar car.

Ernie and Juliette argue about his desire to investigate McTavish’s death. Ernie asks Royce to help examine the body, and Royce concludes that McTavish was poisoned with heroin, likely via the flask of whiskey from which he constantly drank from. A train employee tells them about a terrible crash involving the Ghan decades ago. A school bus was on the tracks, and the train hit it, killing the bus driver, a teacher, and several children.

Ernie and Royce find Brooke in McTavish’s room, going through his papers. She tells them that McTavish was a bad person who crushed her dreams of meeting him by hitting on her and stealing the plot of his third novel from Masters. Royce reveals that McTavish and Fulton had a sexual encounter around that time. After a day excursion away from the train, Ernie sees Douglas throw away a revolver.

Douglass and Ernie talk, and Ernie learns that Douglass’s former partner was the teacher killed in the collision with the Ghan years ago. Ernie deduces that Douglas had the gun because the accident was the basis of McTavish’s third novel and Douglas, believing that McTavish was secretly the bus driver from that accident, booked the Ghan trip to kill him; when someone else killed McTavish, Douglas discarded the gun. From Wolfgang, Ernie learns that one of Wolfgang’s complaints about McTavish was that his writing overuses commas—specifically the Oxford comma.

That evening, Ernie proposes to Juliette, but it goes terribly wrong when he lets on that she’s one of his suspects. Juliette leaves the train, intending to spend the night in Alice Springs and then fly home. Ernie talks with Jasper and, learning that he secretly writes for Wyatt under an assumed name, erroneously concludes that Jasper is Erica Mathison. At three o’clock the next morning, Royce wakes everyone up to announce that he has solved the mystery. After a long speech, he claims that Wyatt is the killer—just as Jasper enters with the news that Wyatt has been murdered.

Everyone crowds around the door of Wyatt’s room; he was stabbed in the throat with a Gemini publishing pen. Nearby is a copy of a manuscript signed “Henry McTavish,” titled Love, Death and Whiskey. The train stops near Coober Pedy, and a detective boards. Ernie learns that Juliette was arrested for both murders.

Outside the window, he sees Fulton trying to steal the detective’s vehicle. Jumping off the train, Ernie chases her but falls into an open mine shaft. She rescues him and reveals that Brooke is McTavish’s daughter, the result of McTavish raping Fulton in 2003. Brooke, unaware of McTavish’s true character, dragged Fulton along on the train because she wanted to meet McTavish. Ernie and Fulton use the detective’s vehicle to catch up with the Ghan, and Ernie makes a daring leap from its hood onto the train just as it comes to a full stop. Fulton stops the vehicle and boards the train as well.

Ernie gathers everyone to reveal his solution to the case: He announces that Jasper isn’t writing for Wyatt as Erica Mathison but has been McTavish’s ghostwriter for many years. His wife, Harriet, tired of Jasper’s work not getting recognized, decided to end the arrangement by killing McTavish. She boiled poppies to make opium tea and drugged some whiskey with it, which killed McTavish. When she realized that the arrangement would continue while Wyatt was alive, she stabbed him with a pen.

When she’s exposed, Harriet breaks a bottle and takes Simone hostage. She escapes onto the roof of the train, where she uses the bottle to injure Ernie seriously. Jasper approaches her, embraces her, and pulls her over the side of the train.

The novel ends with an email from Ernie to his publishing house and an Epilogue from Juliette’s perspective. Ernie, recovering in a hotel room after a hospital stay, writes that both Jasper and Harriet are dead and that he hasn’t yet seen Juliette; however, she’s on her way to see him, and he hopes for a romantic reunion. In the Epilogue, Juliette reports that just after Ernie wrote that email, Harriet—who wasn’t dead after all—broke into his room and stabbed him. He survived but asked Juliette to finish the book. She notes that she agreed to marry Ernie.