Fans of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express will want to travel with Sulari Gentill to discover her take on the historic train haunted by ghosts of the past in Five Found Dead.

Australian twins Joe and Meredith Penvale board the train in Paris as an escape from the last eighteen months. Joe is the bestselling author of a mystery who spent over a year going through chemotherapy and radiation for cancer. Meredith, a lawyer and the narrator, was Joe’s companion during his ordeal, spending her time worrying about her brother. They both need a vacation. Meredith hopes the trip will inspire her brother to write again.

At dinner the first night, they meet some of their fellow travelers. But, they’re shocked the next morning when the cabin next door, 16G, is opened by the steward who finds it bathed in blood, and the occupant is missing from the locked compartment. Joe and Meredith are recruited to join a group of passengers with law enforcement background to investigate the whereabouts of the missing passenger who may be a murder victim. But, the investigation is stymied when the Orient Express crew is caught up in another crisis. The last cars on the train are quarantined because passengers may have a new strain of COVID. The murder of the steward guarding 16G, along with the quarantine, leaves the small group of passengers on their own in search of answers. When the train is turned away from Italy due to the quarantine, Joe and Meredith realize there really isn’t any professional back-up for help.

When a second man is murdered, rumors fly, and those passengers not involved in the investigation are suspicious of those allowed free rein to question people and roam the train. And, Joe makes it clear to Meredith that they’re in the middle of a locked room mystery with a murderer on the Orient Express.

There are more investigators than suspects in Gentill’s outstanding mystery. The descriptions and imagery of the Orient Express are beautiful. Gentill handles Joe’s cancer, and the feelings and emotions of those dealing with it, both the patient and loved ones, with a great deal of knowledge, experience, and empathy. There’s also a great deal of humor. At times, the action seems right out of a Keystone Comedy as sleuths crowd in narrow corridors and follow each other from car to car. However, Meredith and the reader never forget that there’s a killer on board. With the thoughts of authors and fictional detectives of the past, Joe summarizes the trip and the action. “You’re haunted by history and story, the imaginations of the writers who’ve gone before you.”

Sulari Gentill’s manipulative mystery, Five Found Dead, is skillfully written and a worthy addition to stories of crime on trains.

Sulari Gentill’s website is http://sularigentill.com/

Five Found Dead by Sulari Gentill. Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks, 2025. 320p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I received a galley from the publisher through NetGalley, with no expectations of a positive review.