Today's Reading
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 TWO
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.
...
