With A Vengeance

 By Riley Sager

Born into wealth and influence, it all turned to dust when Anna Matheson's father was accused of a heinous and terrible act that resulted in the deaths of many innocent people, including US soldiers on their way to fight in World War II traveling on a train built by Anna's father's company. The train engine was deliberately designed to self-destruct because, according to the accusations, Matheson was a Nazi sympathizer. Supposedly Matheson didn't care that his own son, a soldier, was on that train too.

Matheson never made it to trail to face the accusations because he was stabbed to death in prison. After he was murdered, Anna's mother basically gave up on life and died soon after. Young Anna was alone in the world, stripped of mother, father, brother and of a life of comfort and wealth. She went to stay with her Aunt Retta, who taught Anna that life is pain. But also taught her to stand up to it.

When Aunt Retta died, Anna inherited from her along with a small fortune, a box of documents that proved Matheson was framed by a business rival, Kenneth Wentworth. So Anna comes up with a scheme to bring the guilty parties, of which there are six including Wentworth, to justice. She sends out invitations to a train trip from Pennsylvania to Chicago. Included in each invitation are ominous messages Anna is sure will guarantee the invitees attendance on the train trip. And she is almost correct. Five suspects show up. But the number one guilty party, Kenneth Wentworth, is not there. Instead it's his son, Dante, who intercepted the invitation and took his father's place. Because Dante and Anna used to be a couple but Wentworth put a stop to the relationship and now Dante is hoping for a second chance with Anna.

Anna's plan is confront the suspects with copies of the proof of their guilt and then hand them over to the police when the express train arrives at its only stop in Chicago. Of course, it doesn't quite go the way she intended. First of all, Dante is not his father. Secondly, almost immediately, one of the suspects ends up dead, poisoned, it appears. Third, an uninvited person crashes the party, claiming he got on the wrong train. This person, Reggie Davis, is as welcome as a skunk at a barbecue, and even more unwelcome when he reveals he is actually an FBI agent, placed on board to make sure all the involved parties make it to Chicago alive. And he has already failed at that with the poisoning death of one of them. Before much longer the body count increases again. Anna and Reggie have lost control of the situation and their goal of getting the remaining suspects to Chicago alive is seriously in danger of failure. 

An interesting murder mystery with lots of red herrings and, I think, too many suspects. Also, with Anna being an attractive young woman and with three young single men on board the train, I assumed a romance was going to be part of the story. But, as it turns out, although a couple of advances are made, that never happens. So between the lack of a little romance and the shifting list of suspects, I found the story less than enchanting.