Killer on the Kelvin Explorer Review: A Milverton Mystery That Derails Everything

Read time: 5 minutes

📱📖 Read on Kindle 📃 306 pages ⏱ Duration: 5 hours
Genre: Cozy Mystery 🏷️ Self-published by the author
(ARC provided by author, releases September 9, 2026)

Book Blurb:

When things get shaky at home, Addison Harper jumps at the chance to clear his head on a scenic railway journey through New Zealand’s lower North Island, complete with a restored steam engine, dramatic landscapes, and endless tea. But when a passenger turns up dead partway through the trip, Addison’s plans for a relaxing day (and Milverton’s tourism ambitions) go badly off track. With twelve hours and a train full of suspects, he and Mabel have to find the killer before the journey ends. The fifth Milverton Mystery brings back the town’s chaotic cast of locals, an imperious ginger cat, and a slow-burn romance, wrapped around a classic closed-circle mystery on rails.

Let’s talk … murder!!!

I enjoy train travels. The scenic views, the food and drinks on board, the process of feeling like you are on a journey. Most often, the train travel is the highlight of my journey, than the actual destination. So, when I got to know that Addison is going on a train journey with Mabel, where he happens upon a dead body, there was no question about me not grabbing the book. (Of course, G.B. Ralph came as a saviour and reduced my waiting anxiety by giving me an advance reading copy).

12 hours on Kelvin Explorer. 12 hours for Addison and Mabel to find out who is the killer. There are numerous books on mystery / crime inside a train, and that just proves it is a formula that works. Although G.B. Ralph has used a time tested formula, the execution is the highlight here. The tag team game that Addison and Mabel play to gather information to figure out the mystery, the descriptive background about the actual travel, and the ambience in the train, the who’s who of Milverton being in the train with them, all of this gives a very elegant, and classy vibe to the book that is unique to the series.

This book had been so good, I was reading this even while on a hike. The image above is me not able to stop reading, while sitting in front of a supposedly gorgeous waterfall (I wouldn’t know. I was reading!)

Now about the series:

Milverton is a town I would love to go some day, especially to meet Addison and Mabel. The New Zealand vibes, the unique small town set up, the people, the community… Right from book one, Milverton has got me hooked and the addiction continues even through book 5. G.B. Ralph knows how to create an atmosphere within a small town, and the talent shows in all the books in the series. This one, though, has to be the best so far in the series, because of the short timeframe of 12 hours to solve the crime. I enjoyed reading the book immensely, and can’t recommend it enough!

And honestly, considering how amazing this series is, it has to be a matter of time before a big publishing company comes swooping in for this book. This book deserves to be more widespread and widely consumed, and G.B. Ralph deserves to be more widely known.

Would I recommend it?

Absolutely, without a second thought. Killer on the Kelvin Explorer takes everything I already loved about Milverton and squeezes it into a single, breathless 12-hour window, and it works better than book five in a series has any right to. Addison and Mabel’s tag-team sleuthing, the steam-engine setting, the whole who’s who of Milverton crammed onto one train… I could not put this down. If you’ve never visited Milverton before, start from book one. If you already have, clear your schedule, because you are not putting this one down until you know who did it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

5 book recommendations:

• 6:40 to Montreal by Eva Jurczyk Another closed-circle mystery on a Canadian train, but this one trades Milverton’s cozy warmth for a much darker, twistier ride when the train breaks down in the frigid woods between Toronto and Montreal.

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• All at Sea by Jonathan Whitelaw Swap the train for a luxury yacht and you get the same trapped-with-a-killer setup, this time with a washed-up actor and an influencer forced to play detective on camera. Fun, fast, and just as claustrophobic.

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• Murder on the Christmas Express by Alexandra Benedict If the ticking-clock, trapped-on-a-train premise is what hooked you, this one raises the stakes even further with a sleeper train derailed in a Highland snowstorm and a killer picking off passengers one by one.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• Shadow of the Queen by Scott Finley For the historical cozy lovers, this one moves the journey onto a 1929 luxury ocean liner, where a ship’s nurse turned amateur sleuth gets an assist from a very familiar mystery writer named Agatha.

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• Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie No train mystery list is complete without the book that basically invented the formula. If you want to see where this whole trapped-on-a-train subgenre started, this is the one.

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would you hop on board?

Would you brave a 12-hour train ride knowing there’s a killer somewhere in the carriages? Let me know in the comments if closed-circle mysteries are your thing, or if this one’s convinced you to add the Milverton Mysteries to your TBR.

Book Links

Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal

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