by Benjamin Stevenson
Read by Barton Welch
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Others in the series: Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone
Content: There was some swearing, including a couple f-bombs, and (of course) some murders. It’s in the mystery section of the bookstore.

Ernest Cunningham has spent the last year since his book about his “true” experiences came out attending festivals and enjoying modest success. However, he’s been given a fairly sizeable advance for a second book, which he’s having trouble writing. So when he’s invited to go on the Ghan – a train that travels the width of Australia from Darwin to Adelaide – as part of the Australian Mystery Writers festival, he accepts. What he hopes for is inspiration – most notably in the form of a super popular mystery writer – and what he gets is a couple of murders to solve.

Much like Stevenson’s other book, this one is the thing while spoofing the thing, though this one isn’t nearly as fun as I thought the first one was. It started out strong and fun, but it got bogged down near the middle – granted, that may have had something to do with the car trouble we were having at the time – and by the end, I wasn’t sold on the solution (granted, we were driving 40 miles per hour in a rental car after having spun out in a snowstorm, so I my opinion may be a bit off). I did have fun, and there were some real laugh-out-loud moments. The Australian narrator was a lot of fun to listen to again, and I liked how he made the characters – both British and American ones as well as Australian ones this time – pop.

But, I’m not sure this format works more than once.