Two new murder mysteries cleverly explore the meta — in two very different ways

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2026

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Ilona Bannister’s Five, five strangers wait on a train platform. One will die in the next five minutes but only one person knows: the reader. In Anthony Horowitz’s A Deadly Episode, his real 2018 novel The Word is Murder becomes a fictional film adaptation with one problem: the actor playing the protagonist is dead. Today’s episode features conversations on metafiction with both authors. First, Bannister talks to NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe about writing a novel with a five-minute timespan. Then, Horowitz talks to NPR’s Scott Simon about poking fun at true crime — with a novel about true crime.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Alyssa Adwarnie, and you're listening to NPR's Book of the Day.
0:06.0	Today we have two mysteries for you. In a minute, we'll have the latest murder mystery from Anthony Horowitz, the author behind the Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders series.
0:15.3	But first, a murder mystery that has an intense premise. Five strangers are waiting on a train platform.
0:21.9	When the train arrives in five minutes, one of them will die. The novel is called five. And the author, Ilana Bannister,
0:27.6	talks to NPR's Aisha Roscoe about how her own commute brought her the idea.
0:33.0	Train platforms, by their very nature, are transient places.
0:38.4	Usually just a stop between your starting point and your final destination.
0:43.4	But in Ilana Bannister's new novel, Five, one specific train platform is the final destination.
0:52.5	Someone will die here this morning at the suburban train station.
0:56.0	It will happen in the next five minutes when the 706 to London, Victoria, arrives.
1:01.0	Four others have died here previously.
1:03.0	The novel tells the story of those five minutes and delves into the lives of the five characters waiting on the platform.
1:11.6	One of them will be death number five.
1:15.2	All of them will be forever changed by that morning.
1:19.4	Ilana Bannister, thank you so much for being here to talk with us about this mystery, this post-pounding mystery.
1:26.6	Thank you so much for having me. I'm so delighted to be here.
1:30.3	This is heart pounding. It's five minutes. Somebody's going to die. How did you come up with this
1:36.3	premise in the first place? Well, I had one of those lightning bolt moments that sort of only
1:42.4	happens very, very rarely, I think. I had brought a different
1:46.4	story to my agent and she didn't like it. So I was on my way home on a London bus. I was sitting on
1:53.1	the top deck. And I was thinking about stories. And I thought, well, if I spoke to every person on this
1:58.5	bus and asked them about their life story. I bet it would be so
	...

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