I was up way past my bedtime with Eva Jurczyk’s disturbing, fascinating new novel, 6:40 to Montreal. And I don’t just mean that I couldn’t go to sleep until I finished it—although I couldn’t go to sleep until I finished it—I actually stayed up after I finished the book because the ending messed with my head so much. I haven’t had a book hangover for a long time and I forgot how distracting it can be to be turning a story and its characters over in my mind while I was trying to work. None of this is a warning to stay away from Jurczyk’s thorny tale; it’s just a caution to make sure that you don’t have to be up early for a few days.
Agatha St. John has a lot on her mind. She’s recovering from surgery to remove cancer from her leg. She’s been depressed. The writer’s block just makes it all worse. Her husband gifted her a day trip to Montreal on a train that has notoriously bad WiFi in the hope that Agatha would be able to make some headway on a new novel without the Internet to procrastinate with. It’s a good plan. Well, it would’ve been a good plan if not for the other people in the business class car and the blizzard that traps them together for almost an entire day. There’s a saying about how humanity is just a few meals away from barbarism at any moment but, for this particular car of travelers, civilization breaks down before they run out of croissants.
6:40 to Montreal wears its debt to Agatha Christie lightly. Yes, someone ends up dead on a train that isn’t going anywhere with plenty of suspicious passengers. What happens after the first death, however, defied all my predictions about the plot and who would turn out to be a killer. Jurczyk’s character sketches are absolutely brilliant. Just when I thought I had someone figured out, there would be a twist that had me rethinking every gesture and scrap of dialogue. And even though there are some downright harrowing scenes, I laughed out loud more than once at Agatha’s nemesis as the woman tries again and again to get Agatha to fess up about “stealing” her life for her breakout novel.
I’m a little frustrated that I’m going to have to wait several weeks to talk to anyone else about this book and that ending, since 6:40 to Montreal doesn’t come out until late October. This is the kind of book that I want to read with a group so that we could go over every detail and puzzle out what it all means, if we were right about who the villains were, how much can be chalked up to bad luck, and what might happen to Agatha after the end of the novel. I suppose I should add another caution to go with my note about being careful when this book should be read: take a buddy with you.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.