The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
Night Train

Night Train

Summary


A sharp twist on the noir genre from one of England’s finest fiction writers

'I worked one hundred murders,' says Detective Mike Hoolihan, an American policewoman. 'In my time I have come in on the aftermath of maybe a thousand suspicious deaths, most of which turned out to be suicides, accidentals or plain unattendeds. So I've seen them all: jumpers, stumpers, dumpers, dunkers, bleeders, floaters, poppers, bursters. But of all the bodies I have ever seen none has stayed with me, in my gut, like the body of Jennifer Rockwell. I say all this because I am part of the story I am going to tell, and I feel the need to give you some idea of where I'm coming from.'

Night Train is a mystery story which lingers in the reader's mind even after Mike Hoolihan declares the case closed.

‘Tough, noir, Chandleresque’ Independent

Night Train is both delicate and bruising - a long drawn-out blue note. The book hangs around in the mind like smoke in a jazz club’ Telegraph Magazine

Reviews

  • Night Train is both delicate and bruising - a long drawn-out blue note. The book hangs around in the mind like smoke in a jazz club
    Telegraph Magazine

About the author

Martin Amis

Martin Amis was twenty-three when he wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973). Over the next half century – in fourteen more novels, two collections of short stories, eight works of literary criticism and reportage, and his acclaimed memoir, Experience – he established himself as the most distinctive and influential prose stylist of his generation. To many of his readers, Amis was also the funniest. His intoxicating comedic gifts express a profound understanding of the human experience, particularly its most shocking cruelties, and Amis wrote with pathos and verve on an astonishing range of subjects, from masculinity and movie violence to nuclear weapons and Nazi doctors. His books, which have been translated into thirty-eight languages, provide an indelible portrait and critique of late-capitalist society at the turn of the twenty-first century. He died in 2023.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more