Like Jango Fett, I’m just a simple man, trying to make my way in the universe. And because I’m a simple man, I have simple tastes: I don’t need every story to be a sprawling epic with thousands of characters, a massively complex world, and pages on pages of backstory. Just give me a handful of entertaining characters, and maybe a good MacGuffin for them to chase, and I’m satisfied.

This book is a perfect example: Sully, Hutch, and Jed are three college guys blokes on vacation holiday, which for them consists of drinking as much as they can in every European city connected by rail. But, as sometimes happens in Hitchcock films, a fateful encounter on a train, er, derails their plans.

Little do they realize that an alien spacecraft has crash-landed in Czech Republic, and the occupant is now trying to get home while traveling incognito among the Earthlings. Our beer-addled trio assumes the odd character sitting next to them on the train is just a bit awkward, although Jed’s penchant for internet conspiracy theories makes him more open to other possibilities.

And a good thing, too, because multiple clandestine X-Files-esque agencies are also on the trail of the extraterrestrial traveler, which means the three friends must stay one step ahead of the pursuing authorities as they try to help the lost traveler find the way home.

Is any of this breaking new ground? No, I suppose not. There are shades of E.T., Starman, and a hundred other such stories. But it’s how it’s told that makes it fun. The interactions between the three friends is fast-paced and funny, and becomes even more so when the alien is added to their dynamic. The characters felt real, and the way they develop over the story sneaks up on you gradually, until before you know it, you care about them.

This is what I mean about simplicity: there’s nothing wrong with a nice, simple story, the bare outlines of which you may have heard a thousand times before, but which, when told well, takes on a life of its own. The Wrong Stop doesn’t have any pretensions of being epic or sweeping; it’s just a good story about some interesting characters, and that’s what makes it such an enjoyable ride.