Review: Murder on the Train

Murder on the Train by Faith Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Retired Hillary Greene is recovering from surgery and decides to take a holiday to Hay-on-Wye in Wales where she can also tout her first novel which has just been published (Hay-on-Wye having a large number of book shops and an annual literary festival). Staying at a modest bed and breakfast establishment, her fellow guests are an unusual group.

When one of the guests announces that they are going to take a nearby scenic steam train journey up into the mountains, all the other guests decide it sounds delightful and decide to make it a group outing. Never the most gregarious of women, when the carriage isn't large enough to accommodate all of the guests, Hillary quickly volunteers to sit in another carriage. When they reach the end of the line, all the passengers except one get off the train, one of Hillary's fellow guests has been murdered but no-one else in the carriage saw anything!

As always, this was well written, however I can't help but feel that the identification of the murderer and their motive was a bit obscure. I prefer a mystery where the reader can either guess the murderer or at least think they saw all the clues but didn't put them together whereas with this mystery (in my opinion) the murderer/motive came out of nowhere.

I think/hope that this was an intellectual challenge for Faith Martin, along the 'can I write a locked room Agatha Christie style murder mystery?' and that normal service will be resumed.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Also available on Kindle Unlimited.

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