How do you catch a killer, when all your suspects know how to get away with murder? When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, th...

How do you catch a killer, when all your suspects know how to get away with murder? When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn't pan out. The program is a who's who of crime writing royalty:

• the debut writer (me!)

the forensic science writer

the blockbuster writer

the legal thriller writer

the literary writer

the psychological suspense writer.*

But when one of us is murdered, six authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime.

Or commit one...