6:40 TO MONTREAL, solidly executed story with atmosphere to spare

6:40 TO MONTREAL
EVA JURCZYK
Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: No WiFi, no distractions. No way out…

Agatha needs to get some serious work done on her new book. To help her, her husband bought her quiet time to concentrate: a train ticket for a six-hour ride from Toronto to Montreal. The time aboard sets the stage for a perfect writing retreat, with only a handful of other passengers, plenty of snacks and drinks, and beautiful views.

But Agatha has other plans for her day out… plans that are unexpectedly derailed when the train breaks down in the middle of the frigid Canadian woods, and one of Agatha's fellow passengers dies quietly in his seat. Soon, a pleasant morning in transit turns into a fight for survival against an unknown and unseen enemy. Will Agatha, or any of the passengers, make it out alive?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Nothing about the set-up, or even the execution, of this read is subtle. If you do not know already have prior reading congress with Murder on the Orient Express, I advise you to consider putting this read off for a time and read that classic first. Like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (by the same author), there is only one first time to encounter this plot...I argue you should save yourself for the original because each of these two is a rare flawless read. Christie was not a flawless writer, but those two are her closest to flawlessly executed stories.

Okay, seasoned veterans of the mystery wars, it's just us chickens now. We've read it, maybe more than once, and already know what's up. Does Author Jurczyk have the chops to ring a good change on the Dame's platonic ideal? I'll offer a "yes" vote. I know it's entirely, utterly impossible in today's world for this plot to occur. No part of it would hold up to 2025 reality's technology or its many many many social conventions flouted herein.

Since The Twist℠ isn't much of one for me, I was left to find reasons I was flying through the pages. I like neurotic overwound Agatha, her raggedness from writer's block and looming deadline and simmering suspicion of her husband's motives in gifting her this luxe train trip; she's relatably nutso. As events unfold her responses remain in character for her established neuroticicity (is that a word? I need it so it is now) while drawing on her theoretical expertise in problem solving IRL for the first time.

I also resonated to the Canadian author's evocation of the cold's presence, like it's another character in the story, strongly and positively. I think y'all hothouse fleurs will feel similarly to me on the negative side. That "presence"—the beingness of the cold—is a good narrative technique deployed well, much as in the original. It gives the entire story an agreeably menacing claustrophobia, the kind of containment that, IRL, I'd find intolerable, but feel fine reading about when it's well done. It's well done here.

I'm in the camp that the middle of the story does not maintain the beginning's smart pace; it is down to the exigencies of fair-play storytelling, though, so since I couldn't see a trim or an elision I thought would benefit the pace without snipping off something I could see a need for, I'll tell those carpers to try doing it better before just complaining. The ending was fine, didn't make me roll my eyes like the tidy-bow ending I was expecting would've done. I wonder if fifteen more pages before The Twist℠ might've helped....

Monday-morning quarterbacking at its "finest" which should make Author Jurczyk bask in the glow that she has made the kind of story that her readers really invest in. I'll recommend it for all y'all.