Award-winning Snowy Mountains author Sulari Gentill seems to be having lots of fun in her latest novel. She’s written a modern page-turner that shares the setting of one of Agatha Christie’s most famous murder mysteries: a luxurious rail journey on the Orient Express.
In Five Found Dead, narrator Meredith is accompanying her twin, Joe, on a once-in-a-lifetime trip, to celebrate Joe surviving cancer, and to hopefully help rekindle his crime writing mojo. Fellow passengers include former spies, police officers, private eyes and two sisters on the trail of a swindler. Suspicious? Or merely to be expected given the iconic train’s drawcard mix of literary history and luxury? For many, it’s hard not to conjure an image of a moustachioed Belgian sleuth with the mere words ‘Orient Express’.
Joe’s muse is stirred; he begins writing again, but the next morning the neighbouring cabin is soaked in blood. Cut off from the outside world due to a COVID strain, Meredith and Joe are asked to join the band of on-board sleuths to find some answers. But what if one of them is the killer? Especially as other bodies begin to show up. With cameos from real-life Aussie podcasters Flex & Herds, and plenty of literary nods and winks, Gentill seems to be having tonnes of fun – like Christie – riding the implausibility curve at times.
Five Found Dead is a riveting and fun mystery that also threads in whispers of memento mori and meditations on the fragility of life, as Joe and others confront their mortality.
Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I still live on a Trufferie in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains. My work is published in print in Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada, and worldwide as audiobooks. The little boys I mentioned in my 2010 bio are now strapping young men. It has been a wild and glorious eight years filled with the competing madness of both my real and imaginary worlds. I have met many extraordinary people, made some wonderful friends, earned a readership and, I hope, honed my craft. I remain hopelessly in love with the art of writing.
I’m Australian. I was born in Sri Lanka, learned to speak English in Zambia and grew up in Brisbane. I went to University to study Astrophysics, graduated in Law and after years of corporate contracts, realised I just wanted to tell stories. Perhaps a legal career is a natural precursor to writing fiction.
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