Five Found Dead - Sulari Gentill - Top Book Pick!

Mystery

Rating: 8.5/10

Joe and his twin sister Meredith are celebrating his remission by taking a trip on the iconic Orient Express. Not remotely prepared for the ways in which life is about to imitate art.

As they sit down to their first meal on board the luxurious train, they can’t help but cast their fellow travelers as players in a mystery. A game both wonderfully fitting and spectacularly inappropriate.

When they discover the cabin next to theirs is a bloodbath the next morning, they find themselves pulled into rolls as amateur detectives. They are joined in their pursuit of a slippery murderer by a retired policeman, a private investigator, an international spy, a fraud detective, a duchess with nebulous ties to the presumed dead man and two odd old dames who are definitely hiding something.

Will they figure out the culprit before more bodies start dropping? Of course not! That would be a very short and very boring book.

Apropos of nothing, it would have been a fun twist if the ending reveal had been that this was an elaborate sleight of hand by the Orient Express staff. The whole thing a hoax. An homage to the true fans that seek out such a trip. Can you imagine such surprise and delight?

Footnote: every year we see a niche genre trend pop up in publishing, this year it seems to be books set on trains. In case you’re in the mood to follow this track, here are a few more of them…

The Paris Express – Emma Donoghue

Whistle – Linwood Barclay

With A Vengeance – Riley Sager

My thanks to NetGalley, Poisoned Pen Press and the author for the advanced readers copy.

Book Pairing(s): Woman In The Library by Sulari Gentill, Loose Lips by Kemper Donovan, Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell