At the time, it came quite naturally. The writing, not the deaths, of which the causes were the opposite of natural, of course. Of the survivors, I thought myself the most qualified to tell the story, as I had something that could generously be called a “career” in writing already. I used to write books about how to write books: the rules for writing mystery books, to be precise. And they were more pamphlets than books, if you insist on honesty. Self-published, a buck apiece online. It’s not every writer’s dream, but it was a living. Then when everything happened last year up in the snow and the media came knocking, I thought I might as well apply some of what I knew and have a crack at writing it all down. I had help, of course, in the guiding principles of Golden Age murder mysteries set out by writers like Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle and, in particular, a bloke named Ronald Knox, who wrote out the “Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction.” Knox isn’t the only one with a set of rules: various writers over the years have had a crack at breaking down a murder mystery into a schematic. Even Henry McTavish had a set.
If you think you don’t already know the rules to writing a murder mystery, trust me, you do. It’s all intuitive. Let me give you an example. I’m writing this in first person. That means, in order to have sat down and physically written about it, I survive the events of the book. First person equals survival. Apologies in advance for the lack of suspense when I almost bite the dust in chapter 28.
The rules are simple: nothing supernatural; no surprise identical twins; the killer must be introduced early on (in fact, I’ve already done that and we’re not even through the first chapter yet, though I expect you may have skipped the prelims) and be a major enough character to impact the plot. That last one’s important. Gone are the days when the butler dunnit: in order to play fair, the killer must have a name, often used. To prove the point, I’ll tell you that I use the killer’s name, in all its forms, exactly 106 times from here. And, most important, the essence of every rule boils down to this: absolutely no concealing obvious truths from the reader.
That’s why I’m talking to you like this. I am, you may have realized, a bit chattier than your usual detective in these books. That’s because I’m not going to hide anything from you. This is a fair-play mystery, after all.
And so I promise to be that rarity in modern crime novels: a reliable narrator. You can count on me for the truth at every turn. No hoodwinking. I also promise to say the dreaded sentence “It was all a dream” only once, and even then I believe it’s permissible in context.
Alas, no writers cared to jot down any rules specifically for sequels (Conan Doyle famously delighted in killing off Sherlock Holmes, begrudgingly bringing him back just for the money), so I’m going it alone here. The only help I have is my publisher, whose advice seems to come via the marketing department.
Her first piece of advice was to avoid repetition. That makes good sense—nobody wants to read the same old plots rehashed again and again. But her second piece of advice was to not deliver a book completely unlike the first, as readers will expect more of the same. Just to reiterate: I don’t have any control over the events of the book. I’m just writing down what happened, so those are two difficult rules to follow. I will point out that one inadvertent mimicry is the curious coincidence that both cases are solved by a piece of punctuation. Last year it was a full stop. This time, a comma saves the day.
And what sort of mystery book would this be if we didn’t have at least one anagram, code or puzzle? So that’s in here as well.
My publisher also warned me to work in enough tantalizing references to the previous book that readers will want to buy that one also, but not to spoil the ending. She calls that “natural marketing.” Sequels, it seems, are about doing two things at once: being new and familiar at the same time.
I’m already breaking those rules I mentioned. Golden Age mystery novelist S.S. Van Dine recommends there only be one crime solver. This time, there are five wannabe detectives. But I guess that’s what happens when you put six crime writers in a room. I say six writers and five detectives, because one’s the murder victim. It’s not the one wearing the blue scarf; that’s the other one.
I’d say Van Dine would be rolling in his grave, though that would break one of the general rules about the supernatural. So he’d be lying very still but disappointed all the same.
If I may repeat myself, it’s not up to me which rules I break when I’m simply cataloging what happened. How I managed to stumble into another labyrinthine mystery is anyone’s guess, and the same people who accused me of profiteering from a serial killer picking off my extended family one by one in the last book (natural marketing, see?) will likely accuse me of the same here. I wish it hadn’t happened, not now, and not back then.
Besides, everyone hates sequels: they are so often accused of being a pale imitation of what’s come before. Being that the last murders happened on a snowy mountain and these ones happened in a desert, the joke’s on the naysayers: a pale imitation this won’t be, because at least I’ve got a tan.
Time to shore up my bona fides as a reliable narrator. The rap sheet for the crimes committed in this book amounts to murder, attempted murder, rape, stealing, trespassing, evidence tampering, conspiracy, blackmail, smoking on public transport, headbutting (I guess the technical term is assault), burglary (yes, this is different from stealing) and improper use of adverbs.
Here are some further truths. Seven writers board a train. At the end of the line, five will leave it alive. One will be in cuffs.
Body count: nine. Bit lower than last time.
And me? I don’t kill anybody this time around.
Let’s get started. Again.
Chapter 2
There was less dread instilled in witnessing the public murder (dare I say execution) of a fellow author than there was when my literary agent spotted me on the crowded train platform, elbowed her way through the throng, and asked me, “How’s the new book coming?”
Simone Morrison was the last person I expected to see at Berrimah Terminal, Darwin, given her agency was based four thousand kilometers away. She’d brought Melbourne with her, wearing a coat that was a ludicrous mix of trench and oversized puffer. Then again, she was better dressed than I was. I had on cargo shorts and a buttoned short-sleeved shirt, which had been sold to me in a fishing store as “breathable.” I’d always believed that was the minimum requirement for clothing, but I’d bought it anyway. The problem was that, while our journey had been duly advertised as a “sunrise start,” I’d incorrectly assumed that the baking heat of the Northern Territory’s tropical climate would apply at all hours, including dawn.
It hadn’t.
And though there was light now, we were on the west side of the train, a slinking steel snake that blocked off all the horizon, and so half-mast wasn’t going to do it for warmth; the sun had to really put some effort in. The only warm part of me was my right hand—which had been skinned during last year’s murders and was only partially rehealed, thanks to an ample donation from my left butt-cheek—where I wore a single, padded glove to protect the sensitive skin underneath. In all, I was dressed more suitably for Jurassic Park than a train journey, and I found myself both willing the sun to hurry up and quite jealous of the cozy blue woolen scarf Simone had around her neck.
I say Simone’s office is based in Melbourne, though I’ve never seen it: as far as I can tell, most of her business is conducted from a booth at an Italian restaurant in the city. She helped the chef there publish a cookbook once, which was successful enough to snag him a TV gig, and she’s been rewarded with both a permanent reservation and an alcohol addiction. Every time I slipped into the red vinyl seat across from her, Simone would hold up a finger as she finished an email on her laptop (manicured nails clacking furiously enough that I pitied the person on the other end), take a sip of her tar-dark spiked coffee (bright pink lipstick stain on the ceramic, though, in an unnerving clue to the dishwashing standards of the place, she always wears red), and then say, completely ignoring the fact that she’d often summoned me, “Please tell me you’ve got good news.” She’s a fan of shoulder pads, teeth whitening, heavy sighs and hoop earrings—not in that order.