Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

Ernie’s romantic interest, Juliette, is the catalyst for his growth as a person. She’s the former owner of Sky Lodge Mountain Resort and is currently enjoying the success of her first book—which, like Ernie’s, is an account of the events that occurred at the resort. Because Ernie gives so little thought to her internal life for most of the novel, readers don’t get to know her on a deep level. Any direct characterization of Juliette is filtered through Ernie’s understanding of her: She’s a warm, patient, consistent source of support in his life, but until the novel’s end, he understands her only as a side character in the story that he himself stars in and drives forward. When Juliette finally loses her patience with Ernie, she tells him difficult truths about his self-centered behavior and then temporarily leaves him, sparking his later growth as a character.

Indirect characterization, through Juliette’s words and actions, offers glimpses into Juliette’s personality. She can be pointedly witty, as when she implies that Simone is a vulture by telling her that the desert they’re in is an appropriate place to “circle some carcasses” (15). Her choice to secretly offer Ernie her invitation to the festival because he seems to need the validation indicates that she isn’t plagued by ego and insecurities, as Ernie is, and that she’s an observant and sympathetic partner. Her attempts to get Ernie to see reason about McTavish’s review and the dangers of his investigation portray her as logical and levelheaded, and her decision to leave Ernie after his insulting proposal demonstrates that she knows her own worth and that, although she’s understanding and supportive, she won’t tolerate continued poor treatment. Her strength, devotion to Ernie, and sharp sense of humor are all clearly on display when Juliette herself takes on the role of narrator in the Epilogue. She reports that Harriet is on top of Ernie, “dead arm swinging like an elephant trunk” (312), about to stab Ernie for a second time. Juliette promptly throws the first punch of her life and knocks Harriet out cold.

One of the more prominent authors attending the literary festival, McTavish is the first murder victim. Although a long-running blockbuster mystery series is attributed to McTavish, he’s in reality the author of only three of the novels and has secretly used a ghostwriter for many years. His desperation to preserve his status as a popular author thematically illustrates The Foibles of Literary Culture and Authorial Ego. Despite not having written anything himself for years, McTavish is willing to sit on literary panels at the festival and field questions about “his” books, despite knowing little about them. He has an entitled view of his life as a celebrity author, making sexual advances toward Brooke, whom he assumes is a young fan, and offering an autograph to Jasper because he doesn’t recognize the name of his own ghostwriter.

He’s also a heavy drinker and serially harasses women. McTavish has sexually assaulted at least one woman: Lisa Fulton. He conspired with Wyatt to cover up this crime, and now, many years later, he is willing to collaborate with Wyatt to torture Fulton further with the blurb that reminds her of his assault.

The owner of Gemini Publishing, the publishing house that (one way or another) has published nearly all of the writers at the festival, Wyatt is a deceptive character who appears genial and reasonable on the surface. He enables Simone to attend the festival, reaches out to Ernie immediately to apologize for McTavish’s scathing review, and conducts himself with politeness that is a welcome contrast to the behavior of many authors onboard the train. The text humanizes Wyatt through little details like his allergies and the fact that although McTavish’s behavior bothers him, he’s somewhat powerless to rein McTavish in.

Underneath the veneer of politeness, however, Wyatt is a ruthless businessman who mocks Simone and Harriet when they try to cross him, refuses to publish Jasper under his own name, tries to bribe Wolfgang, and is willing to enter into a criminal conspiracy to protect the reputation of his bestselling author, McTavish. He represents a dark aspect of the theme of The Foibles of Literary Culture and Authorial Ego, and he becomes the novel’s second murder victim when Harriet stabs him with one of his own Gemini Publishing pens.

The killer of both McTavish and Wyatt, Harriet is Ernie’s antagonist (though he’s unaware of this fact) as he tries to solve the murders. If Ernie exemplifies the dangers of insufficiently centering one’s partner, Harriet represents the polar opposite. Harriet’s devotion to Jasper is so intense that it has twisted and warped her. She’s driven to extreme violence against those she views as responsible for her talented husband’s anonymity. Harriet’s anger toward Wyatt and McTavish is also a form of projection and a search for atonement: Before she knew Jasper, she wrote the high-profile critical review that damaged his career, and now she’s displacing her guilt onto Wyatt and McTavish, believing that killing them might somehow free Jasper to become the celebrated author he might already have been had she not panned his work.

The irony is that Harriet’s beliefs about Jasper’s needs are also, to an extent, projection. She genuinely doesn’t see that his beliefs about success differ from hers, and when her crimes are exposed, she’s genuinely surprised that Jasper isn’t grateful for her efforts. A clever and resourceful woman, Harriet uses truthful but misleading language that supports the book’s thematic arguments regarding Language as a Tool to Manipulate Perception and murders two adult men aboard a train full of potential witnesses. In addition, she’s tenacious, tracking and attempting to kill Ernie even after she’s badly injured when she falls from the moving train. Unfortunately, Harriet’s intelligence, strength, and devotion aren’t complemented by the firm moral foundations that guide characters like Juliette.

Jasper is the ghostwriter for many of McTavish’s Morbund books. He functions as Harriet’s motivation for killing McTavish and Wyatt and as a foil to Ernie, teaching him valuable lessons about being a writer. Jasper is a talented author whose early work under his own name wasn’t particularly well received. The woman who became his wife, Harriet, was even responsible for a widely read critical review of Jasper’s work. As a result, Jasper turned to ghostwriting and experienced great success under McTavish’s name. The fact that Jasper’s work sells huge numbers of books and garners critical praise under McTavish’s established name is an indictment of The Foibles of Literary Culture and Authorial Ego as a theme. Jasper himself, however, is one of the few authors onboard the Ghan who manages to avoid the perils of authorial ego. Over the years, he learned to appreciate writing as a way to connect with audiences, entertain them, and impact them; he isn’t in it for fame or to have his name attached to literature.

In his first conversation with Ernie, Jasper counsels him not to take criticism of his work personally. Later, Ernie asks Jasper how he avoids taking the literary world too seriously, and Jasper says, “Bad reviews are part of being a writer” (193). He urges Ernie to take a look at his own motivations for writing: “Do you write this stuff for people to read, for people to enjoy, or to have your name in lights? That’s all it comes down to” (193). In light of Jasper’s attitude toward writing, his wife’s belief that she must kill McTavish and Wyatt to secure fame for Jasper is ironic. In addition, Jasper’s perspective makes a big impression on Ernie, who notes in his email near the book’s conclusion that “Jasper Murdoch knew that his name was the least important thing about his work, and now I know that too. A book isn’t a book until it’s read” (306).

An author of legal thrillers and one of the guests of the Australian Mystery Writers’ Festival, Fulton is the survivor of a sexual assault by Henry McTavish in 2003; this assault resulted in the birth of her daughter, Brooke. Fulton was invited to the festival because, after 21 years, she’s finally publishing a second novel. She doesn’t particularly want to be at the festival but has come to supervise her daughter, who insists on meeting McTavish. Fulton is a woman who has repeatedly been placed in complex and emotionally fraught situations and still always tries to do the right thing.

After the rape, Fulton tried to have McTavish prosecuted, despite the vast power differences between a woman just at the start of her writing career and a man who has authored a blockbuster series. When the case fell apart, Fulton accepted money and signed a nondisclosure agreement, not so much for herself but because she learned that she was about to become a single mother. After Brooke’s birth, Fulton did her best to be a loving mother to her rapist’s child: She raised Brooke on her own and didn’t burden her with the truth about her father’s character. When Brooke insisted on going to the festival, Fulton attended with her in order to protect her, despite her own reluctance to see McTavish and Wyatt. Throughout the story, small moments convey Fulton’s maternal love: She fusses over Brooke’s comfort and emotional safety through gestures like putting aloe vera on her burn and guiding her away from seeing a murder scene. Suspecting that Brooke may be implicated in McTavish’s murder, she steals his final manuscript to secure Brooke’s financial interest in it and flees the train, hoping to draw suspicion away from her daughter.

Despite what she risks to help her daughter, Fulton refuses to leave Ernie when he falls into a mine shaft and even drives him back to the Ghan instead of immediately continuing her escape. This characterization of Fulton juxtaposes her deep morality against the moral bankruptcy of characters like McTavish, Wyatt, and Simone, highlighting the novel’s thematic critique of The Foibles of Literary Culture and Authorial Ego.