Ernest Cunningham

Knives Out and Clue meets Agatha Christie and The Thursday Murder Club in this fiendishly clever blend of classic and modern murder mystery. Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I'm not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate. I'm Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I'd killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it's a little more complicated than that. Have I killed someone? Yes. I have. Who was it? Let's get started. EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE. My brother. My stepsister. My wife. My father. My mother. My sister-in-law. My uncle. My stepfather. My aunt. Me.

When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn't pan out. The program is a who's who of crime writing royalty: the debut writer (me!) the forensic science writer the blockbuster writer the legal thriller writer the literary writer the psychological suspense writer But when one of us is murdered, the remaining authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime. Of course, we should also know how to commit one. How can you find a killer when all the suspects know how to get away with murder?

My name's Ernest Cunningham. I used to be a fan of reading Golden Age murder mysteries, until I found myself with a haphazard career getting stuck in the middle of real-life ones. I'd hoped, this Christmas, that any self-respecting murderer would kick their feet up and take it easy over the holidays. I was wrong. So here I am, backstage at the show of world-famous magician Rylan Blaze, whose benefactor has just been murdered. My suspects are all professional tricksters: masters of the art of misdirection. THE MAGICIAN THE ASSISTANT THE EXECUTIVE THE HYPNOTIST THE IDENTICAL TWIN THE COUNSELLOR THE TECH My clues are even more abstract: A suspect covered in blood, without a memory of how it got there. A murder committed without setting foot inside the room where it happens. And an advent calendar. Because, you know, it's Christmas. If I can see through the illusions, I know I can solve it. After all, a good murder is just like a magic trick, isn't it?