Originally posted June 5, 2024. “I’m not seriously a suspect?” Juliette said. “I mean, everyone’s a suspect.” “Are you?” “Well… no.” “Why not?” “I’m the narrator.” My conclusion about Benjamin Stevenson’s previous novel, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone , was that it was best treated as a sort of practical joke on the reader. While the title might make you think it’s something like Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), an elaborate tale of family treachery and literal backstabbing, the actual story was a fairly standard mystery where most of your attention is on deciphering the truth about what you’ve been told you will be told. A self-proclaimed “reliable narrator,” Ernest Cunningham promises to be upfront and honest about the truth, then proceeds to bamboozle you with exact-words trickery in the manner of a particularly unfair cryptic crossword. So while I wasn’t sure what to expect of Stevenson’s follow-up, Everyone on This Train is a Suspect , I went in with ...