Everyone in My Family
This book was a tremendous amount of fun. I laughed aloud while reading. I was invested in solving the mystery. And, I didn’t guess the ending. It was like an Agatha Christie, only much much funnier. Although I’m arriving late to the party (this book is three years old and currently being adapted for a TV series), I’m here now — so let’s talk about Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, a brilliant whodunit written by Australian author Benjamin Stevenson.
The story is narrated by main character Ernest Cunningham (Ernie or Ern for short). Partially responsible for his brother’s stint in jail, Ernest is feeling uneasy about his family reunion at Sky Lodge Mountain Retreat. Ern’s brother is being released from jail and will also be attending. However, not long after the Cunningham party arrives, a stranger is murdered on Sky Lodge grounds. Soon, old grudges, long-buried secrets, and new suspicions are elbowing for space at the Cunningham dinner table. Will Ernie be able to solve the murder mystery and clear the Cunningham name before anyone else dies? Short answer? No. Longer answer? Someone else will die.
I loved this book. I knew I would love it as soon as I read the epigraph — the membership oath of the Detection Club, 1930, a secret society of mystery writers including Agatha Christie, G.K. Chesterton, Ronald Knox, and Dorothy L. Sayers:
Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God?
Of course, there was also that bit in the Prologue about Ernest being a “reliable narrator.” (I hate unreliable narrators. Who wants to piece together clues provided by someone who’s been lying to you throughout the entire book!) And then, Chapter 15 clinched the matter when the narrator described the retreat’s library — a collection of water-damaged, moldy paperbacks — as a “booklover’s nightmare.” (I’ll never understand how people who claim to love books can allow their prized reading material to become a compost of moldy, musty, dust-caked, food-smeared, dog-eared remains. Finally, someone who agrees with me — that is not love.)
My personal feelings about this novel aside, the author does a wonderful job of balancing humour with suspense, family drama with interesting backstories, and a clever mystery with a satisfying ending. Stevenson’s descriptions of people and places are visual, relatable, and, frequently, hilarious. His chosen narrator is unpretentious, with a keen eye for the ironic and comical. Nevertheless, this story includes some very serious moments and weighty topics. It is a murder mystery after all, and the characters are family.
My website is dedicated to the craft of storytelling, so I review books that satisfy me as a reader and inspire me as a writer. With that in mind, this novel is particularly entertaining. The narrator, Ernest Cunningham, is a man who writes books about writing crime fiction. He, therefore, sees the unfolding events as key moments in a detective story. He pokes fun at the typical plot development and presentation of clues in mystery novels, while he also strives to follow the “10 Commandments of Detective Fiction” (Ronald Knox, 1929). Ernie’s commentary on familiar techniques employed by mystery writers, and him in his telling of this mystery, is ideal for my book blog. We are being told a story by a character who instructs others on how to tell stories.
Since its publication in 2022, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone has been followed by two more “Ernest Cunningham mysteries”: Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect and Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret. So, if you enjoy reading the first novel in this series, breathe easy — there are more. And, when it comes to books, that’s always good news.
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This book review of Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson is based on the 2024 paperback edition (© 2022 Benjamin Stevenson) published by Mariner Books (an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, U.S.A.) and on the January 2023 unabridged audiobook edition (© 2023 Benjamin Stevenson; ℗ 2023 HarperCollins Publishers) published by HarperAudio and narrated by Barton Welch.