Our Thoughts Precisely: Five Found Dead by Sulari Gentill

Title: Five Found Dead

Series: n/a
Author: Sulari Gentill
Source/Format: Publisher; paperback ARC
More Details: Mystery
Publisher/Publication Date: Poisoned Pen Press; August 19, 2025

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

On a train, there are only so many places to hide…

Crime fiction author Joe Penvale has won the most brutal battle of his life. Now that he has finished his intense medical treatment, he and his twin sister, Meredith, are boarding the glorious Orient Express in Paris, hoping for some much-needed rest and rejuvenation. Meredith also hopes that the literary ghosts on the train will nudge Joe's muse awake, and he'll be inspired to write again. And he is; after their first evening spent getting to know some of their fellow travelers, Joe pulls out his laptop and opens a new document. Seems like this trip is just what the doctor ordered…

And then some. The next morning, Joe and Meredith are shocked to witness that the cabin next door has become a crime scene, bathed in blood but with no body in sight. The pair soon find themselves caught up in an Agatha Christie-esque murder investigation. Without any help from the authorities, and with the victim still not found, Joe and Meredith are asked to join a group of fellow passengers with law enforcement backgrounds to look into the mysterious disappearance of the man in Cabin16G. But when the steward guarding the crime scene is murdered, it marks the beginning of a killing spree which leaves five found dead—and one still missing. Now Joe and Meredith must fight once again to preserve their newfound future and to catch a cunning killer before they reach the end of the line.

Five Found Dead, the new murder mystery by Sulari Gentill, was a fun Agatha Christie-esque locked room case set in the isolated—if not claustrophobic—confines of the Orient Express while there was an all too familiar panic as Covid cases threatened to develop into an outbreak.

I had an inordinate amount of fun reading this novel.

The mystery was straight forward, whodunit style including a wrecked cabin, a missing body, and a host of characters who had an axe to grind with the victim. The story had a sense of urgency. The novel is aptly named.

The characters were personable and complicated. Joe, a novelist, and his sister, Meredith, a lawyer, were a highlight. They had a great sibling dynamic/rapport, and I thought it was interesting to see how that came into play once the mystery/sleuthing started and everyone was slightly suspicious of each other.

Overall, I had a wonderful time reading Five Found Dead.

About the author....

Once upon a time, Sulari Gentill was a corporate lawyer serving as a director on public boards, with only a vague disquiet that there was something else she was meant to do. That feeling did not go away until she began to write. And so Sulari became the author of the Rowland Sinclair Mysteries: thus far, ten historical crime novels chronicling the life and adventures of her 1930s Australian gentleman artist, the Hero Trilogy, based on the myths and epics of the ancient world, and the Ned Kelly Award winning Crossing the Lines (published in the US as After She Wrote Hime). In 2014 she collaborated with National Gallery of Victoria to write a short story which was produced in audio to feature in the Fashion Detective Exhibition, and thereafter published by the NGV. IN 2019 Sulari was part of a 4-member delegation of Australian crime writers sponsored by the Australia Council to tour the US as ambassadors of Australian Crime Writing. Sulari lives with her husband, Michael, and their boys, Edmund and Atticus, on a small farm in Batlow where she grows French Black Truffles and refers to her writing as “work” so that no one will suggest she get a real job.