My fellow crime fiction enthusiasts here at Readings and I are big, big fans of Sulari Gentill, and we all get very excited whenever she has a new book out. Five Found Dead is a standalone novel and marks a bolder departure from her most recent works, The Mystery Writer and The Woman in the Library, both of which had me guessing and guessing again. I say bolder because the setting for this book is none other than the legendary Orient Express.

Ever since Agatha Christie’s masterwork Murder on the Orient Express, this train has had a special pull for writers and readers alike. Gentill resurrects this famed rail service with wonderful aplomb – its final journey was in 2009 – for a thoroughly entertaining mystery.

What should be a celebratory journey for Australian twins Joe and Meredith Penvale – Joe having recently recovered from a long bout of cancer and himself an increasingly famous mystery writer – soon turns into a ride from hell when a cabin is found strewn with blood, but there’s no body to be found. The tension, and isolation of their setting, is enhanced by a COVID outbreak in the end carriages. True to form, more bodies pile up, prompting a sweeping investigation into a truly bizarre ensemble.

Sulari Gentill is a master storyteller, and she’s thrown a lot into this book to make it into the suspenseful yet wholly fun whodunnit that kept me guessing right up to the clinch point.