Award-winning stand-up comedian and author Benjamin Stevenson talks to us about his latest mystery 'Everyone on This Train is a Suspect' and shares his secret love of horror movies.
Benjamin Stevenson is an award-winning stand-up comedian and author. He has sold out shows from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival all the way to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He is the author of four novels, including the national bestsellers Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, which has been sold in twenty-seven territories around the world and will soon be adapted into a major HBO TV series, and his latest Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect which was published in the UK by Michael Joseph in February 2024. You can find all Benjamin's books on the Suffolk Libraries catalogue.
Of course, I love both of these authors! I am a newer convert to Horowitz (and I heartily recommend him), so I'd say the influences on my writing are more the Golden Age - Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie etc. - but also those who are doing the modern spin on it. A big influence is Stuart Turton (author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle) because his books are so ambitious and he takes so many risks - I try to inject a bit of that risk-taking into my own writing.
I have always devoured books, but there was a time when I just couldn't find exactly what I wanted to read on the shelf? You know, that absolutely perfect book that feels like it was written for you? When you can't find it, the only way to get it is to write it for yourself!
I work best under pressure! In all seriousness though I enjoyed my role in helping others get their stories told and heard, but I have stepped away to focus on just my own books for now.
I tried to write something that wasn't like anything else on the shelf. I also decided that I didn't want to write a book that a lot of people thought was 'fine' or 'good', I wanted to write a book that some people might not like but maybe that one person would love. Turns out, writing that way made it a whole lot more unique and genuine than if I'd set out to please everybody, and more people than I've ever imagined have connected with it.
It's very different! On stage, you have to constantly refine your energy, adapt to the tone of the room, and no show is ever the same. Writing a book allows you to perfectly refine something, but you only get one shot at it. At least no one heckles you when you write a book though.
I look for a few things: a group of characters with pre-existing tensions, and a place to lock them in. From there I see what they do to each other. I'm not a heavy researcher as I don't want details to take me out of the narrative, so I try to dream up the novel the way I want it and then research helps fill in the blanks (location, science, etc.). My trick is that my narrator is an everyday person, not a cop or a private detective, so he doesn't necessarily need to know all the ins and outs of procedure and forensics.
I was aware that returning to the same character for a sequel would be a challenge, so I thought the only way to do it was to make it even bigger. I decided that a great detective is only as good as the killer they are pursuing, so I needed a perfect nemesis. It was here, sitting at my desk trying to figure out how to kill people, that I realised that perfect murderer was... ME! Once I knew my suspects could all be crime writers - experts in the art of murder, even if only in fiction - I knew I could have a lot of fun with it. Place that cast of writers, publishers and agents on a train in the Australian outback and I knew I had the book!
Slowly! I knew I wanted a character who could look back on the classics of the genre and deconstruct them, but his tone, humour and fourth-wall breaking took a while to develop so that he was consistent.
I have a Christmas-themed Novella publishing this year, where Ernest takes on a mystery filled with festive clues, victims and perils. It's loads of fun!
Even though Crime fiction is my forte - I adore horror movies, the pulpier the better!
