Crime fiction writer, Joe Penvale is recovering from an intense battle with cancer. He decides to take a trip on the Orient Express hoping to gain inspiration. He is joined on this journey by his sister Meredith.

The glamorous environment does the trick, and Joe is already sitting down to write after their first evening on board, inspired by both the surroundings and the ghosts of past mysteries. He can practically sense the presence of Hercule Poirot roaming the corridors.

Things take a more alarming turn the following morning, and the rest of the journey is spent in an ever-increasing state of panic and claustrophobia. The author does such a good job of portraying this intense atmosphere as the trapped passengers (including a number of policemen and detectives) try to find the serial killer in their midst.

I loved this story and its nod to classic Christie and Hitchcock murder on a train stories. This modern version is a worthy addition to the genre. It’s a wonderful mystery full of twists and suspense - all wrapped up in the wonderful setting of the Orient Express. Enjoy the ride!

I received an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Overall, this was a really fun, locked-room (train) story. I loved the mentions and callbacks to Christie. I did not see the ending twist coming, which is always a pleasant surprise! I thought the cast of characters was well-written, although a bit hard to follow in the beginning.

I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley! Thank you for allowing me a chance to read and review this work before the release date.

I think this was a bad book to read right now for me. I just finished With a Vengeance and rewatched Murder on the Orient Express so for some reason this book read too similar to those too and I didn't like it but I may come back to it in the future.

Overall this was fun story withing the locked door genre with plenty of red herrings, suspects and murder. I could not wait to get to the end to find out who was the killer and/or who exactly had been killed. The main character a writer, Joe, is recovering from cancer and is on board with is slightly obnoxious older sister who is too oddly over protective. A conman boards the train and there is a whole cast of victims on board as the infamous trains winds its way from France to Italy. This story is full of delightful twists and turns with a side of danger and a hint of comedy. I do not want to give away anymore spoilers but it is a fun read.

This was a fun Orient Express mystery although some of the twists were quite predictable. The author did a great job with conveying the atmosphere to the reader.

I was super excited about this one as I love a good murder mystery. However, I found myself losing interest at times and not having that "I have to know what's going to happen next" sort of feeling. To me this was like a slow burn mystery as the story slowly introduces the characters, sets the setting, and gets into the murder. I really liked the setting being on a train and some of the things that the author used in this story was clever/unique. Overall, I'm glad I read this one but I can't say it was one of my favorites.

I've previously read The Woman In The Library by Gentill, and loved it. When I saw Five Found Dead, I walked in thinking I was either going to love it off the bat or grow to love it, and I think based off the time it took me to read it, I really didn't have that much fun.

From the get, you get met with a slow start and a group of characters. Once the book does seem to pick up, its good, but it's not great? To be fair I only gave this book a read because I knew I loved previous work by Gentill.

Crime fiction writer Joe Penvale has just completed months of medical treatment and procedures and is in remission. His twin sister has booked them a getaway on the Orient Express for relaxation and hopefully to get Joe back to writing. Little did they know that this trip would be reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s book of the same name in so many ways! After waking the first morning to a crime scene in the cabin next door with lots of blood and no body, the siblings find themselves in the middle of an investigation to find the killer…or killers, in this closed train whodunit!

This novel airs more on the side of the classic who done it with a few twists that are objectively predictable if you are a frequent mystery reader. The main characters had a good enough backstory, but as a whole, the characters were all over the place and hard to keep track of. While this was not my favorite it book, I will highlight that it was original and the mystery tied up quite nicely.

I enjoyed this book. Although it did lose its way some times but I did enjoy some of the characters.

Thank you to Netgalley for gifting me this ARC

I have mixed feelings about this. I loved the beginning, the ending was fine, but somewhere in the middle, it kind of lost its way. It managed to find it's way back to give it a fun ending, so I gave it 3.5 stars and rounded it up.

This is a locked door mystery that is tongue and cheek with Agatha Christy's Murder on the Orient Express's locked door mystery. It takes place on the very train that Christy writes about, and is commented upon many times as the characters are also aware of its existence. But then, a murder with no body, and then bodies with no murderer, and the mystery begins.

What I really loved about this book is the ease Gentill distinguishes the characters. So often in these types of books, the beginning is so difficult because you have to get to know everyone before anything happens, but they can blend together easily. With Five Found Dead, I got to know everyone, and it was way more of a delight than a chore.

Towards the middle, things dragged and the story almost got away from us as red herrings were introduced. I felt they just muddied the waters rather than helped with the twist. I didn't see it coming (and was kicking myself for not seeing it), but I don't think the herrings had anything to do with it.

All in all, it's a fun book, and for those that love the genre, this may end up being a favorite.

Thank you to Net Galley for gifting my with this ARC. All opinions are my own.

Great metafictional novel. I really liked the Aussie characters, and it was really well plotted, however I did not think that the ending was necessary. Otherwise, this was a really enjoyable, and reminder me of why I love Sulari Gentill's books so much.

I very much enjoyed Five Found Dead. It's the story of Meredith and Joe who decide to take a ride on the Orient Express. Meredith was a lawyer and her brother Joe was a fiction writer. His book just hit the best sellers list. For 18 months he fought cancer and won. During that time, Meredith was his biggest supporter. The trip on the Orient Express was celebratory. Their first night on board, the man in the cabin next door to them ended up dead. And then, the next day, one of the stewards was killed. The guy who was in charge of the train, Mr. Fleischman, decided to put together a team to help solve the murders. Meredith and Joe were on that team. Also on the team were two sisters who were in their '60s, a French retired police officer, two other police officers, and a woman who was a dignitary.

All of the passports of the passengers had been collected and were stored in a safe. Mr. Fleischmann asked Maxim who was one of the stewards to go to the safe and retrieve the passports so they could see a picture of the man who was the cabin of the dead man. When Maxim went to retrieve the passports, he was killed. Also, another steward who have been placed outside the door of the first dead man was killed. There were two podcasters aboard who ended up dead as well. Another key player was Frank, the bartender.

This book was a merry-go-round with lots of ins and outs. And the solution was a twist. I would never have guessed that the murderer was who it turned out to be. The story held my attention throughout, and kept me on the edge of my seat. Really, there were several several who could have been the culprit. The author did an exceptional job keeping up the suspense. The characters were well developed and even though the plot seem to be all over the place, the storyline was especially easy to follow. I would love to read more by this author. I gave it five stars.

this was a good book!! I think the premise was very good! It kept me wondering what was going to happen, and how the ending would play out. I was not able to guess the ending so thats good!!

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

This was a quick, fast paced mystery that was perfect for a rainy day. The atmosphere was very well crafted and immediately drew me into the story entirely. There was a large cast of characters but they felt distinct enough to keep track of. I appreciated how the story heralded back to the Agatha Christie novels that it drew inspiration from and the solution to the whodunnit — many layered and twisty — felt like an apt tribute.

A fun and highly entertaining, if not altogether plausible, murder mystery!
We join siblings, Joe and Meri, onboard the famous Orient Express for a celebratory trip…. but then the unexpected happens and passengers and staff start getting murdered! Who is the killer and can the mystery be solved before the train reaches its destination?
I did enjoy this story - it was a fairly easy and quick read, although the characters were plentiful. The storyline was quite far fetched but it made for a fun read and a change from the usual murder mystery.
Based on this, I’d definitely read one of Sulari Gentills books again.

Five Found Dead

Five Found Dead follows crime author Joe and his twin sister Meredith as they embark on a journey aboard the Orient Express, a trip meant to mark Joe’s recovery from cancer. However, their voyage takes a sinister turn when a murder occurs, pulling them into a joined investigation with a group of other passengers who are connected to law enforcement in some variety. Intriguingly, the lingering presence of COVID-19 weaves its way into the mystery, adding a modern twist to the classic setting.

I must admit, the novel was not entirely what I expected; it leaned more toward the cozy mystery genre than I had anticipated. At times, the plot required a certain suspension of disbelief, and while I won’t delve into specifics to avoid spoilers, there were moments that stretched logic. However, once I embraced the book on its own terms, I found myself enjoying it.

There is much to appreciate here—the writing is fluid, the pacing engaging, and the central characters are compelling. While not all the supporting characters left a strong impression, the core cast was interesing. Most importantly, the final twist delivered exactly what one hopes for in a mystery novel—an element of surprise that ties everything together in a satisfying way.

The influence of Murder on the Orient Express is evident both thematically and structurally, which was a delight. As a fan of Agatha Christie’s original, I enjoyed seeing how this book played with familiar tropes while crafting its own narrative.

Ultimately, I read Five Found Dead quite quickly by my standards—a testament to its readability and intrigue. While it may not have been what I initially expected, it proved to be an engaging and entertaining mystery

I originally fell in love with the author Sulari Gentill from her extremely meta novel The Woman in the Library. Unfortunately, while this particular story attempted the same quality by way of multiple homages to Agath Christie, Alfred Hitchcock, and Gentill's personal fight with cancer, the story - though well-written - still fell a bit flat.

Our main protagonists of Meredith and Joe are rather vanilla. Joe is a cancer survivor, and Meredith is his sister, but that's about where their character development stops. Nothing allowed them to stand out or be particularly exciting leads. We do have a very full cast of 15+ suspects and/or victims, but they were similarly quite unremarkable. We have hints at romance that aren't explored deeply. I would have really enjoyed being more emotionally invested in our cast of characters.

For a murder mystery in which we end up with five dead bodies by the end of it, there is a distinct lack of urgency or danger. Each time a dead body is discovered, it feels relatively emotionless and bland.

While this novel is clearly inspired by past train murder mysteries, it does attempt to take the "locked door on a train" murder trope and modernize it. We see the COVID-19 pandemic make an appearance as a significant plot element, which was an interesting inclusion.

Overall - this is not a bad book: it just feels a bit more mediocre when compared to The Woman in the Library (and yet is definitely superior to The Mystery Writer). There's a meta element of an ill Gentill writing a book about an ill author who is writing a book on the train about another ill author, but it just wasn't fleshed out enough to be interesting. While perhaps a bit vanilla, I still found this to be an entertaining murder mystery that I would recommend putting at the bottom of your TBR list.

Joe is an author, who has been battling with cancer, so he and his sister decide to have a break and take a trip on board the Orient Express. Joes sister Meredith is hoping that the trip will get Joes creative juices flowing again, as due to his illness, his writing has suffered. The plot begins when the man in the next cabin to theirs disappears, his cabin left soaked in blood.
I believe this book is loosely based on Agatha Christies book, Murder on the Orient Express. Certainly the cast of this story appear to be a mix of characters as was in the original. In my opinion though, the similarity between the two books ends there. I found this book to be implausible, some of the scenarios rather far fetched. Yet I had to carry on reading it, just to see what happened next.
I did enjoy the book, the humour in it, though I'm not sure how intentional it was. I have read books by this author before, and enjoyed them more than this one.

A closed door, murder mystery and a Christie for the modern age.
Joe Penvale and his sister, Meredith, board the Orient Express for the trip of a lifetime. They are not disappointed…but for all the wrong reasons when the disagreeable passenger in the compartment next to theirs disappears…leaving nothing but a blood-soaked room. Has he been murdered or has he killed another passenger? If so, where is the body?
To complicate matters this is post-pandemic with a new deadly virus causing panic and hysteria. The news breaks that passengers in the last carriage are infected, and so they are quarantined. But worse still, the train is not permitted to go forward to its destination or cross a border to return to France. The train is stuck fast, and as the body count rises so does the realisation that Joe and Meri are trapped onboard with a serial killer.
This was a fun-read with a satisfying who-dunnit angle. The plot was deliciously perilous and the stakes high. The story did have me guessing and eagerly turning the pages for the big reveal. The culprit(s) – no spoilers here, just keeping the options open – was unexpected, but equally didn’t come as a slap-to-the-forehead “Why didn’t I see that?” a-ha moment. In truth, and I am being very critical here as it is a thoroughly enjoyable book, the reveal didn’t quite live up to the twists of the rest of the book. But this doesn’t stop me recommending Five Found Dead, and I had enough fun with the characters to look for other books by this author.