Great Black Kanba

An American woman wakes up on an Australian train and has no memory of who she is or where she's going. Her traveling partner has disappeared, leaving behind a scant few items she claimed belong to her memory-challenged friend. She doubts her departed pal's veracity -- her taste in clothes couldn't really be this bad, could it? At the next stop, she is joined by a multitude of possible relatives (they didn't know what she would look like, and she hesitates to tell them what's going on until she can try to figure out her identity). These eccentric relatives, along with a couple of men who claim they're engaged to her, join our amnesiac protaganist for the remainder of the long train voyage across Australia. She doesn't know who to trust, particularly after a new (old?) friend (rival?) is murdered. She does get to leave the train, but only to keep changing trains.I loved this book. It's entertaining, clever, and a very quick read. There's lots going on, and wackiness abounds. I loved this book, and look forward to reading all the Little sisters' books I can get my hands on. Rue Morgue calls the sisters "the reigning queens of the cozy screwball mystery from the 1930s to the 1950s." The nifty introduction reveals that they did all their writing in bed ("Chairs give one backaches" said Gwenyth), adding to and rewriting sections and sending them back and forth. They wrote 21 stand-alone comic mysteries, all but one with the word "Black" in the title.