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AJ Blythe: Welcome to the Down Under Mystery Club.
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AJ Blythe: I’m AJ Blythe and joining me is fellow mystery author Ava Ness.
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AJ Blythe: Every week we dive into curious cases, cracking good reads and all things mystery.
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AJ Blythe: Grab a cuppa, settle in and let’s get sleuthing.
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AJ Blythe: Welcome back, dear listeners.
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AJ Blythe: I’m AJ, and today we are diving back into the world of mystery with my brilliant recurring guest, Ava Ness.
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AJ Blythe: Hi, Ava.
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Ava Ness: Oh, hello, AJ.
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Ava Ness: That’s a lovely introduction.
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AJ Blythe: In a moment I’m going to outline an Australian mystery.
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AJ Blythe: I’ve done the research.
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Ava Ness: And I’m coming in mostly blind.
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AJ Blythe: After we’ve discussed the case, we’ll talk about the mystery novels the case brings to mind.
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AJ Blythe: So this case starts off with a family heading out for a fun Saturday night at one of Sydney’s most iconic landmarks, LunarPark.
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AJ Blythe: The harbour breeze would be cool, the carnival lights flashing, and the air filled with the scent of popcorn and the sound of laughter.
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AJ Blythe: They decide to cap off the night with a ride on the park’s vintage ghost train, a harmless dark tunnel of campy scares and plastic skeletons.
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AJ Blythe: But this time the harmless ride catches on fire and not everyone survives.
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Ava Ness: Yeah.
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AJ Blythe: To the public, this was initially chalked up to a tragic freak accident.
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AJ Blythe: But behind closed doors, a far more sinister story was being buried.
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AJ Blythe: The authorities didn’t want a proper investigation.
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AJ Blythe: They wanted the ashes cleared, the witnesses silenced and the truth hidden.
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AJ Blythe: Because the mystery of the 1979 LunarPark Ghost Train fire centres on whether that blaze that killed seven people was a tragic accident or a deliberate act of mass murder covered up by corrupt police.
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Ava Ness: Gosh.
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AJ Blythe: It remains one of Australia’s most haunting and deeply suspicious cases.
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AJ Blythe: So I’ll cover the tragic timeline of that winter night and then we’ll look at, you know, the contradictions, the mystery bikies and the notorious underworld figure who allegedly ordered the attack.
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AJ Blythe: As Ava said, she’s mostly coming in blind because this was quite a well documented fire.
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AJ Blythe: Back when it happened it would have been big news and it’s something that I think most Australians would be very familiar with.
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AJ Blythe: It happened on the night of June 9, 1979 and the ghost train ride was full but around 10:15pm a fire tore through the winding tunnels.
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AJ Blythe: Because the interior was constructed of highly flammable materials like tar, paper and old timber, it only lasted a few short minutes for the whole place to be engulfed in flames.
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AJ Blythe: Very sadly, seven people didn’t make it out.
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AJ Blythe: A father and his two young sons and four mates.
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AJ Blythe: They’re around 12, 13 years of age from Waverley College.
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AJ Blythe: They were actually there with a fifth boy who was alone in the last carriage and was amazingly pulled to safety by an attendant.
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AJ Blythe: So that is very tragic, but it’s what happened straight after the smoke cleared that the story takes a turn.
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AJ Blythe: Within mere hours of the tragedy, New South Wales Police heavily pushed the official story the fire was a tragic accident caused by an electrical fault.
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AJ Blythe: But the contradictions began immediately.
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AJ Blythe: Firefighters on the scene explicitly disputed it, noting the extreme speed and intensity of the blaze.
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AJ Blythe: There were multiple riders and witnesses who went through the attraction that night who reported the distinct overwhelming smell of kerosene inside the tunnels right before the fire broke out, strongly suggesting an accelerant was used.
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AJ Blythe: Now in the ghost train there was a fake fire, but that was not run with kerosene, it was only pretend.
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AJ Blythe: Then there is the element of the mystery bikies.
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AJ Blythe: There’s been at least eight independent witnesses who reported seeing a suspicious group of men dressed like bikies hanging around the ghost train right before the fire.
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AJ Blythe: One witness overheard one of the men saying, You shouldn’t have done that, just as smoke began to billow from the building.
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AJ Blythe: Yet police completely ignored these statements.
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AJ Blythe: None of these crucial witnesses were ever called to give evidence at the initial 1979 coronial inquiry where ultimately an open finding was handed down stating the cause could not be definitively proven.
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AJ Blythe: And I’m not sure about you, Ava, but that’s probably about as much as you’ve probably heard.
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Ava Ness: Yeah, that’s right.
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Ava Ness: You know, I’m not going to reveal my age, but I was quite young when this happened.
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Ava Ness: And I remember the news reports and all of the newspaper coverage, just how dreadful it was and just the feeling of the fear.
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Ava Ness: I think there was a lot of fear suddenly that a place that had been joyful had turned so deadly.
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Ava Ness: I had no idea that there was any kind of mystery surrounding it.
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Ava Ness: I just knew what had happened.
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Ava Ness: I can’t say I’m looking forward to finding out what happened, but I’m interested to find out.
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AJ Blythe: And I think you hit one of the things that I felt when I was doing the research.
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AJ Blythe: It was that juxtaposition of this is a safe, happy family place.
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AJ Blythe: This is where families go to be joyful and to be entertained and create amazing memories and have a wonderful day for something so tragic to actually to happen at one of these places.
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Ava Ness: Absolutely.
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AJ Blythe: Well, for over 40 years, the case sat frozen, protected by what is believed to be a monumental police cover up.
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AJ Blythe: We now know that Detective Inspector Doug Knight, who was the officer that led the case, was later exposed as deeply corrupt.
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AJ Blythe: He was described as a fixer who altered evidence for criminals.
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AJ Blythe: Former police prosecutors have since broken their silence, alleging police actively intimidated witnesses, suppressed arson evidence and controversially bulldozed the crime scene within less than 12 hours to prevent a proper forensic investigation.
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AJ Blythe: In fact, it was only three hours after they’d removed the last body that the place was bulldozed.
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Ava Ness: No.
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AJ Blythe: The silence was broken after the release of Australia’s ABC 2021 television show called Exposed, which was an investigative documentary series.
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AJ Blythe: It brought forward bombshell testimonies pointing directly to Abe Saffron, a notorious Sydney underworld figure and crime boss known as Mr Sin.
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AJ Blythe: Saffron reportedly wanted to seize control of the lucrative LunarPark lease, and his own cousin later admitted that Saffron routinely used arson to clear out businesses he wanted to acquire.
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AJ Blythe: This exposure sparked national outrage, leading to the New South Wales government to offer a massive $1 million award for fresh information in 2021.
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AJ Blythe: Following an exhaustive multi-year review by the unsolved Thomas A team, Strike Force Sedgman,
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AJ Blythe: Detectives recently handed a secret final police report to the NSW State Coroner with strict suppression orders placed over the police report, leaving only heavily redacted copies for the surviving families.
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AJ Blythe: And I think it’s a move that has quite shocked people, but the NSW Coroner’s Court recently concluded it still supported the original electrical fault theory, finding no definitive fresh evidence to legally support the underworld crime arson conspiracy.
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AJ Blythe: And obviously there’s a lot of information on the internet.
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AJ Blythe: You can download the original coroner’s report back from 1979, but it does seem that there’s a lot of question marks still over this particular case.
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Ava Ness: It really is unbelievable that with all of the forensics and technology and the advances that we’ve had since that time,
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Ava Ness: that they still don’t know what happened.
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Ava Ness: Was the nature of the cover-up that good?
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AJ Blythe: I think that in part of the issue with the forensics was that the place was just completely bulldozed.
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AJ Blythe: One of the mothers of the children who perished in the fire arrived at the scene a day or so later to lay flowers at the site.
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AJ Blythe: And when she arrived, she’s quoted as a saying, there was just ground left.
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AJ Blythe: The whole area had been cleared out, so there really wasn’t the chance to do forensics, to look for accelerants and things that fire investigators would normally do.
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AJ Blythe: It would be completely reliant on eyewitness accounts.
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AJ Blythe: And from what I read of
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AJ Blythe: People who were there at the time, quite a few of them said that they weren’t re-interviewed again for the second investigation.
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AJ Blythe: So I don’t know whether they just looked at the information that pre-existed or whether there was a lot of fresh information that’s not been available as far as I can see.
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Ava Ness: Like with a lot of these mysteries that we’ve talked about, it seems like there’s two possibilities.
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Ava Ness: One, it was just an issue with the electricals, that there was an electrical fault, it sparked a fire.
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Ava Ness: the place was mostly made up, as you said, of timber and other flammable materials, and it was just a tragic accident.
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Ava Ness: Or there was a lot more things going on behind the scenes, and there was sinister motives, or probably a combination of both of those things.
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Ava Ness: Maybe it was, there was a lot of those things going on, and then the fire happened for legitimate reasons, but
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Ava Ness: I think it must have been awful for the members of the families to have, one, lost their loved ones in that manner, but also then to have all of this unknown.
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AJ Blythe: Oh, that’s right.
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AJ Blythe: I think it would be terrible.
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AJ Blythe: And I mean, they would have received a copy of this redacted.
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AJ Blythe: report that came out in 2022, I think the report was probably handed over.
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AJ Blythe: I don’t think it will have brought them closure.
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AJ Blythe: I don’t think it’s necessarily given them more information.
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AJ Blythe: In the original coroner’s report, which I’ve had a look at, it says that in the recommendations that they needed to have more staff, that if perhaps there was somebody who was there regularly, they would have noticed something like the smell of kerosene,
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AJ Blythe: that was reported by some of the public who went through the ride.
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AJ Blythe: However, I have read a quote from one of the attendants who said that they did smell kerosene.
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AJ Blythe: It’s a matter of have people’s memories changed over time?
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AJ Blythe: Have they read these conspiracies or read things that they thought might have actually been fact and their memory itself has changed?
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AJ Blythe: Or were these things that they’ve remembered since that moment?
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Ava Ness: I think it would be almost impossible for your memories not to be affected, particularly with all of the conspiracy theories.
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Ava Ness: You’d have to be second guessing yourself over time.
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Ava Ness: But I wonder too, if it was kind of like, this will be a bit of a strange example to use, but I remember reading a Star Wars book once and one of the things that was used against the Empire was that they didn’t ever expect that.
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Ava Ness: it was possible for them to be infiltrated or defeated.
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Ava Ness: And I kind of wonder if there was sort of that bulletproof feeling in that environment because it was such a joyful, happy place that the possibility of something going wrong, it just wasn’t top of people’s minds.
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Ava Ness: And so, you know, even when the warning signs were there, perhaps they weren’t processing them that way.
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AJ Blythe: Well, that’s a really good point because you can’t imagine that something like that is going to happen.
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AJ Blythe: And I mean, the fact that the officer who led the case was then later found to be corrupt and had connections to the Sydney underworld wouldn’t have helped the stories that went around about it, whether they’re true or not, whether he was corrupt on that case, you don’t know.
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AJ Blythe: But it does seem odd that they would bulldoze the site within hours of the last body being removed.
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Ava Ness: Yeah.
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Ava Ness: It does, but I also kind of think it was such a different time.
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Ava Ness: The world we live in now, we’re always preparing for the worst case scenario.
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Ava Ness: We run drills, we have plans, we have sops, you know.
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Ava Ness: And I don’t really feel that was the way that the world was in the 70s.
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Ava Ness: I think there was a lot more ignorance and just lack of awareness, I suppose, of the need to prepare for a lot of things because they hadn’t happened.
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Ava Ness: I mean, obviously this changed as soon as this happened.
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Ava Ness: It changed the way parks and probably around the world operated.
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Ava Ness: But you’re right, even with that aside, the fact that everything was demolished in such a quick amount of time, I mean, I get maybe that they just were so distressed that they wanted it all done with, but you have to wonder what the motives were.
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AJ Blythe: Oh, exactly.
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AJ Blythe: And I mean, and as you said before, if this happened today, if that fire was happening in today’s world, that crime scene would sit there, tape around it, the park would be closed for days while they investigated the tragedy.
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AJ Blythe: There would be forensics all over it.
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AJ Blythe: There would be fire examiners.
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AJ Blythe: They would work out exactly what the cause was.
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AJ Blythe: But they have devices now, which I don’t know were around in the 70s, like sniffers that can test for accelerants and they can check the direction of flame.
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AJ Blythe: And there are so many other things that would happen.
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AJ Blythe: They would interview all the witnesses and they’d have it on camera, not just on pencil and paper, which I imagine was probably what happened back in the day.
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AJ Blythe: the forensics that we have now because they can test for a whole heap of things that they weren’t able to in the 70s.
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AJ Blythe: I think today, if this fire happened, it would be a totally different scenario.
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AJ Blythe: Like you said, I think that they would know exactly what the cause was.
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AJ Blythe: was, at the very least, even if they found it was something suspicious, they would definitely know what the cause was behind the fire.
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Ava Ness: Yeah, I mean, you just have to think there must have been an element of woeful under preparation, under training, unqualified investigators, which didn’t help.
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AJ Blythe: No, that’s right, because we don’t have that many parks like that in Australia.
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AJ Blythe: And as far as I’m aware, it’s the one and only time that anything like that has happened.
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AJ Blythe: So it wouldn’t have been something that they would have prepared for.
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Ava Ness: Yeah, But still, all of the contributing factors to the conspiracy theories.
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Ava Ness: I don’t want to say when they smoke this fire because that doesn’t seem very appropriate for this mystery, but some other metaphor that is the same thing.
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, and I mean, I think that woefully, underprepared is a good description because there were things that were said that the fire trucks couldn’t get through.
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AJ Blythe: They were trying to get everyone out of LunarPark.
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AJ Blythe: And if you’re not familiar with it, it’s right on the river, the harbour there.
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AJ Blythe: It’s down low.
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AJ Blythe: It has steep slopes leading down to it.
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AJ Blythe: It’s not something that’s easily accessible.
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AJ Blythe: And the trucks couldn’t get in and then they couldn’t get
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AJ Blythe: access to water.
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AJ Blythe: So I think there were delays as well in actually being able to attend to the fire, although from the descriptions it seems that the fire took control very quickly, probably faster than they’d have been able to deal with anyway.
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Ava Ness: Yeah, it is a very inaccessible area even today.
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Ava Ness: And again, it just makes you wonder what kind of fire preparation plans
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Ava Ness: they even had.
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AJ Blythe: That’s right.
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AJ Blythe: I mean, today, as we know, if you’re in Australia, you have to have inspections of your hydrants and your extinguishers and hoses that are in buildings every six months or so.
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AJ Blythe: You have to go through practices of drills if there is a fire or an emergency.
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AJ Blythe: And those things probably weren’t in place back in the 70s.
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Ava Ness: No, I just think it was a, I don’t know, maybe just a bit of a more innocent time.
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Ava Ness: But unfortunately, that innocence was shattered when this happened.
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Ava Ness: And no doubt there was some shady things happening.
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Ava Ness: Theme parks would seem to be, as we’ll talk about shortly, a good place for other illegal activities or other shady things to be happening in the background.
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Ava Ness: It’s just whether or not that was a contributing factor to this fire or not.
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AJ Blythe: That’s right.
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AJ Blythe: That’s right. And I guess if they’ve had a second investigation and a second coroner’s report handed down and they couldn’t come to a different conclusion this time, it’s an answer we’re probably never going to know.
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Ava Ness: No.
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Ava Ness: And again, you would think after all at this time that if there had been an organised crime story to be told, that it would have been told that somebody would have come forward.
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Ava Ness: The possibility of somebody coming forward with a story like that and
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Ava Ness: it not being picked up would be quite slim.
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AJ Blythe: I think in this day and age with everything we have with technology and media and so on, I think if somebody was going to confess, it would definitely have made the rounds.
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Ava Ness: Yeah, or even if they just made an accusation, I don’t know if there’s been a lot of accusations over the years in terms of finger pointing.
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Ava Ness: I know there’s been, as you’ve said, about the police and the corruption, but you would think if there was
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Ava Ness: someone who had ordered for this to happen, that kind of story would have come out by now.
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AJ Blythe: No, I think I have to agree.
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AJ Blythe: And I think that whether it was historical negligence, bad planning or some sort of corporate sinister underworld land grab that was covered up, we’ll never know for sure because I don’t think it’ll ever be legally proven.
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AJ Blythe: So I think for the moment we can say case closed.
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Ava Ness: Very sadly it does seem that is the case closed.
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AJ Blythe: So the real life Lunar Park Ghost Train Fire in Sydney is the ultimate real world noir tragedy in Australian history.
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AJ Blythe: And I think the case reads exactly like a dark, complex crime novel with a crooked cop, a shadowy puppet master, a real estate conspiracy and a relentless truth seeker.
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AJ Blythe: What do you think, Ava?
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Ava Ness: I agree.
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Ava Ness: And I think that it’s also part of that carnival amusement park mystery sub-genre where you have the happy place
00:17:11.000 –> 00:17:14.000
Ava Ness: that becomes a not so happy place.
00:17:14.000 –> 00:17:25.000
AJ Blythe: Exactly and I think that most mystery series at some point seem to touch on some sort of carnival, whether it be spring fair or a traveling carnival or an amusement park.
00:17:25.000 –> 00:17:33.000
AJ Blythe: I think that at some point most mystery authors tend to gravitate towards that because it is such great fodder for a mystery.
00:17:33.000 –> 00:17:41.000
Ava Ness: That’s right and because there’s such busy places as well and there’s so many dark corners and places to hide
00:17:41.000 –> 00:17:46.000
Ava Ness: things like a crime or a disappearance or some sort of unexplained event.
00:17:46.000 –> 00:17:50.000
Ava Ness: It’s the perfect place to set that kind of mystery.
00:17:50.000 –> 00:17:51.000
AJ Blythe: Oh, absolutely.
00:17:51.000 –> 00:17:56.000
AJ Blythe: And especially if it’s a traveling carnival, you’ve got the backgrounds of the people who are actually working at it.
00:17:56.000 –> 00:17:58.000
AJ Blythe: Like what life are they escaping?
00:17:58.000 –> 00:18:00.000
AJ Blythe: Why are they wanting a job where they’re moving around?
00:18:00.000 –> 00:18:03.000
AJ Blythe: Because they tend to get given quite tragic backstories a lot of the time.
00:18:03.000 –> 00:18:06.000
AJ Blythe: And they have that culture of the carnies keep together.
00:18:06.000 –> 00:18:10.000
AJ Blythe: They don’t turn their back on anyone and they’re very protective, like that gypsy kind of
00:18:10.000 –> 00:18:17.000
AJ Blythe: of storyline as well where they’re kept very, very separate and don’t trust the outsiders who aren’t part of the circuit.
00:18:17.000 –> 00:18:21.000
Ava Ness: And make it hard to trace the suspects for that reason.
00:18:21.000 –> 00:18:22.000
AJ Blythe: That’s right.
00:18:22.000 –> 00:18:24.000
AJ Blythe: And they’re also very transient.
00:18:24.000 –> 00:18:25.000
AJ Blythe: The staffing changes.
00:18:25.000 –> 00:18:30.000
AJ Blythe: So somebody who was in this town then doesn’t actually make it to the next town because they’ve left and moved on.
00:18:30.000 –> 00:18:32.000
AJ Blythe: So you haven’t got the consistency.
00:18:32.000 –> 00:18:33.000
Ava Ness: Yeah.
00:18:33.000 –> 00:18:37.000
AJ Blythe: A story that’s come from another town is harder to follow because it’s different people.
00:18:37.000 –> 00:18:38.000
Ava Ness: Yeah.
00:18:38.000 –> 00:18:40.000
Ava Ness: And it’s just like the perfect setting for a mystery because
00:18:40.000 –> 00:18:43.000
Ava Ness: You’ve got all those physical elements.
00:18:43.000 –> 00:18:50.000
Ava Ness: So you’ve got the maze-like rides, mirrors, tunnels, ghost trains.
00:18:50.000 –> 00:18:57.000
Ava Ness: There’s so many places to conceal evidence, so many places where clues can be hidden in plain sight.
00:18:57.000 –> 00:19:04.000
Ava Ness: I think there’s a reason why a lot of mysteries and thrillers are set in and around amusement parks and carnivals.
00:19:04.000 –> 00:19:05.000
AJ Blythe: I agree.
00:19:05.000 –> 00:19:09.000
AJ Blythe: I mean, you have to take, for example, Kerry Greenwood, she even set one.
00:19:09.000 –> 00:19:13.000
AJ Blythe: on the LunarPark Ghost Train, the Castlemaine Murders with Frani Fisher series.
00:19:13.000 –> 00:19:22.000
AJ Blythe: The difference is that this was actually the Melbourne LunarPark, not the Sydney LunarPark, which I hadn’t actually realised there was a difference between the two.
00:19:22.000 –> 00:19:27.000
AJ Blythe: I just always heard LunarPark Ghost Train and immediately thought of Sydney, but the one that Frani visits is in Melbourne.
00:19:27.000 –> 00:19:39.000
AJ Blythe: It still has that contrast of innocent family entertainment and then the sort of horror of her taking her children for a fun day out at the amusement park, but it ends when the ghost train ride
00:19:39.000 –> 00:19:51.000
AJ Blythe: mechanism drops a real mummified corpse right in front of them, obviously triggering Franny to investigate, but it’s that same situation of something that’s supposed to be joyful, being ruined by something that’s quite horrific.
00:19:51.000 –> 00:19:57.000
Ava Ness: Yeah, Unfortunately not all of these kind of mysteries are.
00:19:57.000 –> 00:19:58.000
Ava Ness: that distressing.
00:19:58.000 –> 00:19:59.000
AJ Blythe: No, not at all.
00:19:59.000 –> 00:20:01.000
Ava Ness: She’s younger than my more light-hearted.
00:20:01.000 –> 00:20:05.000
Ava Ness: I’m sort of, one that comes to mind is the Mystic Caravan series by Amanda Rameley.
00:20:05.000 –> 00:20:07.000
AJ Blythe: I was going to mention that one as well.
00:20:07.000 –> 00:20:12.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, A whole series based on that carnival life.
00:20:12.000 –> 00:20:16.000
Ava Ness: Yes, and she likes to say, who doesn’t like making fun of clowns?
00:20:16.000 –> 00:20:17.000
Ava Ness: And that’s why she wrote one.
00:20:17.000 –> 00:20:22.000
Ava Ness: So yes, I think there’s 20 or 21 books in that series.
00:20:22.000 –> 00:20:25.000
AJ Blythe: As well as the crossovers with some of her other series as well.
00:20:25.000 –> 00:20:32.000
AJ Blythe: Those characters do pop up in a few places and they definitely have a much more fun storyline.
00:20:32.000 –> 00:20:37.000
Ava Ness: Yeah, so if you are looking for something perhaps not as heavy as…
00:20:37.000 –> 00:20:44.000
Ava Ness: something like this real-life mystery that we’ve been talking about, and that is definitely a fun series to read.
00:20:44.000 –> 00:20:53.000
Ava Ness: It does have supernatural elements, but it is a much more light-hearted, cozy mystery and lots of good fun, good characters and good crossovers with her other books as well.
00:20:53.000 –> 00:20:57.000
AJ Blythe: It’s a great place to start if you aren’t familiar with Amanda and Lee, to start with those books.
00:20:57.000 –> 00:21:07.000
AJ Blythe: Another one, if you’re looking for something that’s a little bit more light-hearted, and this is a different take on that whole carnival, is a very recent release by Kate Sully, the Paradise Heights miniature railway bus.
00:21:07.000 –> 00:21:08.000
Ava Ness: Yes.
00:21:08.000 –> 00:21:14.000
AJ Blythe: Because it centres around a local vintage miniature amusement railway and a neighbourhood dispute that turns criminal.
00:21:14.000 –> 00:21:21.000
AJ Blythe: So it’s got that kind of nostalgic feel, the local trains and park attractions, but obviously on a miniature scale.
00:21:21.000 –> 00:21:23.000
Ava Ness: Yes, yes, it’s a great book.
00:21:23.000 –> 00:21:24.000
Ava Ness: I love that one.
00:21:24.000 –> 00:21:32.000
AJ Blythe: And I think we can’t talk about a train ride goes wrong without mentioning probably the most famous of all, which is Murder on the Orient Express.
00:21:32.000 –> 00:21:34.000
AJ Blythe: by Agatha Christie.
00:21:34.000 –> 00:21:35.000
Ava Ness: Yes.
00:21:35.000 –> 00:21:41.000
AJ Blythe: That Hercule Poirot story is made so many different versions of the movies, the TV series.
00:21:41.000 –> 00:21:46.000
AJ Blythe: I think that even if you haven’t read an Agatha Christie, you would have to know the story of the Murder on the Orient Express.
00:21:46.000 –> 00:21:47.000
Ava Ness: Yes.
00:21:47.000 –> 00:21:52.000
Ava Ness: And I would be remiss not to mention that I have my own mystery set on a train.
00:21:52.000 –> 00:21:53.000
AJ Blythe: You do.
00:21:53.000 –> 00:21:54.000
Ava Ness: A roaring murder.
00:21:54.000 –> 00:21:58.000
AJ Blythe: I had that one down to mention, but you feel free to talk about it yourself.
00:21:58.000 –> 00:21:59.000
Ava Ness: Oh my goodness.
00:21:59.000 –> 00:22:02.000
Ava Ness: Thank you so much. So yes, it is inspired by Murder on the Orient
00:22:02.000 –> 00:22:06.000
Ava Ness: It is one of my favourite Agatha Christie books.
00:22:06.000 –> 00:22:10.000
Ava Ness: And I especially love the audiobook with David Suchet doing the narration.
00:22:10.000 –> 00:22:23.000
Ava Ness: You know, I think I really just found the humour in Pyro in that book from the audiobook and actually had decided to do a reader magnet before I started the first novel, which was going to be set in England.
00:22:23.000 –> 00:22:30.000
Ava Ness: And then it just became a novel because it just got a life of its own as books sometimes tend to happen.
00:22:30.000 –> 00:22:32.000
Ava Ness: So it was great fun.
00:22:32.000 –> 00:22:37.000
Ava Ness: Although it was a bit challenging to write a book set on a train because it’s such a small space.
00:22:37.000 –> 00:22:39.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, it’s a very closed room mystery, really.
00:22:39.000 –> 00:22:45.000
Ava Ness: Yes, especially when you have a dog on that train.
00:22:45.000 –> 00:22:50.000
Ava Ness: You have to do a lot of negotiating, the practicalities of what’s going to happen with that dog.
00:22:50.000 –> 00:22:52.000
Ava Ness: It’s great to have just such an interesting cast of characters.
00:22:52.000 –> 00:22:57.000
Ava Ness: And I think this is what you see in train mysteries and in these sort of amusement
00:22:57.000 –> 00:23:05.000
Ava Ness: about carnival style mysteries is that you have a very interesting cast of characters, which makes the story and the mystery so much fun to read.
00:23:05.000 –> 00:23:06.000
AJ Blythe: Oh, I have to agree.
00:23:06.000 –> 00:23:20.000
AJ Blythe: I think there aren’t many of those carnival amusement park mysteries that I’ve read that I haven’t enjoyed because you do have that bigger cast, the quirky characters, and often too that you’ll have, you know, animals coming into, which I always enjoy.
00:23:20.000 –> 00:23:25.000
AJ Blythe: So not just the classic cozy dog or a cat, but you might have other animals that come in.
00:23:25.000 –> 00:23:27.000
AJ Blythe: You might have a snake for a, you know, a charm.
00:23:27.000 –> 00:23:30.000
AJ Blythe: have their snake or something like that, which just adds to the complexity.
00:23:30.000 –> 00:23:32.000
AJ Blythe: Did the snake bite them or was it poison?
00:23:32.000 –> 00:23:33.000
AJ Blythe: Yes. That sort of thing.
00:23:33.000 –> 00:23:37.000
AJ Blythe: I probably need to talk about another book, which is a mystery.
00:23:37.000 –> 00:23:39.000
AJ Blythe: It’s not a horror story by Stephen King.
00:23:39.000 –> 00:23:40.000
AJ Blythe: I don’t do horror.
00:23:40.000 –> 00:23:43.000
AJ Blythe: I would never read a horror one called Joyland.
00:23:43.000 –> 00:23:48.000
AJ Blythe: And that takes place at a North Carolina amusement park in 1973.
00:23:48.000 –> 00:23:54.000
AJ Blythe: And years before the story begins, there’d be a murder inside the horror house ghost train ride.
00:23:54.000 –> 00:23:58.000
AJ Blythe: And then fast forward and the protagonist is a heartbroken
00:23:58.000 –> 00:24:04.000
AJ Blythe: college student working a summer job at the park who becomes obsessed with having to solve that ghost train cold case.
00:24:04.000 –> 00:24:08.000
Ava Ness: Yes, I think outside of the mystery genre, there’s definitely a lot of horror.
00:24:08.000 –> 00:24:17.000
Ava Ness: Movies and TV and books that are set around theme parks and carnivals for lots of the reasons that we’ve talked about.
00:24:17.000 –> 00:24:18.000
Ava Ness: It’s the perfect environment.
00:24:18.000 –> 00:24:19.000
AJ Blythe: Well, this one isn’t horror.
00:24:19.000 –> 00:24:20.000
AJ Blythe: This is a thing.
00:24:20.000 –> 00:24:21.000
AJ Blythe: This is a straight mystery.
00:24:21.000 –> 00:24:22.000
Ava Ness: Oh, is it?
00:24:22.000 –> 00:24:23.000
Ava Ness: Oh, okay.
00:24:23.000 –> 00:24:24.000
AJ Blythe: It is.
00:24:24.000 –> 00:24:25.000
AJ Blythe: No, this has got no horror at all.
00:24:25.000 –> 00:24:28.000
AJ Blythe: This is a Stephen King grew up reading those kind of hard
00:24:28.000 –> 00:24:35.000
AJ Blythe: world noir mystery stories with the cover with the, you know, the redheaded woman looking quite startled on the front.
00:24:35.000 –> 00:24:38.000
AJ Blythe: And his book actually has that type of cover on it.
00:24:38.000 –> 00:24:40.000
AJ Blythe: And it is completely mystery.
00:24:40.000 –> 00:24:44.000
AJ Blythe: It’s been published as a mystery by a mystery publisher.
00:24:44.000 –> 00:24:51.000
AJ Blythe: And when he actually released it, he only released as a paperback because that’s where he grew up reading was these mystery books with these paperbacks.
00:24:51.000 –> 00:24:57.000
AJ Blythe: So to start with, you could only buy the book because he wanted people to physically read a copy of the story.
00:24:57.000 –> 00:24:59.000
Ava Ness: My apologies to Stephen King.
00:24:59.000 –> 00:25:01.000
Ava Ness: I thought that everything he wrote was horror.
00:25:01.000 –> 00:25:06.000
AJ Blythe: No, I did too until somebody mentioned this book to me and I was like, but he writes horror.
00:25:06.000 –> 00:25:07.000
AJ Blythe: I’m not touching any of his.
00:25:07.000 –> 00:25:15.000
AJ Blythe: And it’s interesting if you do read, go on the Goodreads page or something like that, reviews of it, there are people apologizing to him, saying exactly that.
00:25:15.000 –> 00:25:16.000
AJ Blythe: Like, I’m so sorry.
00:25:16.000 –> 00:25:19.000
AJ Blythe: I’ve never touched one of your books because I assumed they were all horror.
00:25:19.000 –> 00:25:21.000
AJ Blythe: But Joyland is not.
00:25:21.000 –> 00:25:26.000
Ava Ness: Okay, well, you know, it’s in the title.
00:25:26.000 –> 00:25:31.000
AJ Blythe: That’s another one that I thought was quite a good echo of our LunarPark case as well.
00:25:31.000 –> 00:25:32.000
Ava Ness: Yeah.
00:25:32.000 –> 00:25:36.000
AJ Blythe: Well, I think that brings us to the end of today’s episode.
00:25:36.000 –> 00:25:43.000
AJ Blythe: So for now, grab your favourite hot drink, settle in with a great book, and we’ll meet you right back here next week to dissect the mystery of the Min Min lights.
00:25:43.000 –> 00:25:44.000
AJ Blythe: Happy reading, everyone.
00:25:44.000 –> 00:25:46.000
Ava Ness: Bye.
00:25:46.000 –> 00:25:48.000
AJ Blythe: Thanks for joining the Down Under Mystery Club.
00:25:48.000 –> 00:25:54.000
AJ Blythe: If you enjoyed the show, follow so you never miss an episode and share it with a fellow mystery lover.
00:25:54.000 –> 00:25:59.000
AJ Blythe: We enjoy hearing from you, so drop us a comment at ajblythe.com/podcast.
00:25:59.000 –> 00:26:02.000
AJ Blythe: Until next time, club adjourned.
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