Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone (2022) by Benjamin Stevenson

The traditional, Golden Age-style detective story has seen a tremendous resurgence over the past ten years spurred on by the fortunate concurrence of the reprint renaissance gaining full momentum with the outbreak of the translation wave – which occurred a decade ago this year. A confluence of discovery, and rediscovery, leading to a rebirth of the classically-styled, fair play detective novel. Not to mention a locked room revival that came as a byproduct of the reprint renaissance and translation wave. Happy little accidents, indeed!

So times have definitely changed over the past twenty years, particularly the last ten, which even gave rise to a strong, independent scene of traditional and borderline experimental impossible crime experts. After all, a rising tide lifts up all ships.

I'm still flinchy when it comes to modern detective fiction presented as clever, hilarious send-ups of the Golden Age country house whodunit or clever, hilarious modern reinterpretations of the classic British mysteries. More often that not, they aren't clever (e.g. Catherine Aird's The Stately Home Murder, 1969) nor hilarious (e.g. Gilbert Adair's The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, 2006). At their worst, they trot out old, dusty tropes and cliches presented as clever, subversive takes on the "surprise" solution (the butler did it by way of a secret passage). Like I said on a previous review, I've been tricked too many times with false promises of contemporary, Golden Age-style mysteries not to be flinchy – hence why I was skeptical about today's subject. Nearly everyone raved about Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone (2022) by Australian stand-up comedian Benjamin Stevenson upon its release, but the packaging and presentation was cause for hesitation.

I honestly forgot it existed until John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, returned from hiatus in January and recommended Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone as "the best one" with "a couple of impossible crimes." Yeah, it's embarrassing how easy it really is to reel me in. The promise of a couple of impossible crimes usually does the trick.

Stevenson's Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone is the first entry in the Ernest Cunningham series, which currently counts three novels comprising of Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023) and Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret (2024). The titles in combination with their covers immediately pushes them in the cozy corner of the genre, but John Norris turned out to be correct when he called them puzzling, engaging meta-mysteries – both honoring and spoofing the fair play principles of the traditional detective story ("Knox would have me drawn and quartered..."). That still sounds a bit cozy adjacent. Regardless of its traditional trappings and narrative, Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone is a dark, gritty crime novel with all the plot-complexity of a classic mystery. There are, however, no impossible crimes or locked room murders.

Ernest Cunningham is a writer who writes books on how to write a book and something of an expert on crime-and detective fiction. Cunningham is also the narrator who promises the reader to be a reliable narrator, contrary to the customary reliable narrator, but "not competent." Everything he tells is the truth or what he believed the truth to be at the time. Cunningham regularly addresses the reader or foreshadow what's to come like referring in the opening to the chapters where the readers can expect the "gory details" or acknowledging "there is only one plot-hole you could drive a truck through." There are layers and double meanings to everything. Cunningham's narrative recounting the events gives this otherwise dark, modern crime tale its classical whodunit structure festooned with clues and red herrings.

Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone takes place during the Cunningham family reunion at the remote Sky Lodge Mountain Retreat, which sounds conventional enough, but everyone in Cunningham's family has killed someone. Some of his relatives, "the high achievers," killed more than once. So the family is well-known to the police and media, especially after the murder Ernest's brother is serving time for. Three years previously, Michael turned up at Ernest's doorstep with a bag of money and a dying man in the backseat. Michael asks him to help bury the man and Ernest complies at first, but witnesses something wishing he hadn't and turned him to the police – even testifying against him. That betrayal turned their mother, Audrey, against Ernest. Her current husband and their stepfather, Marcelo Garcia, who's a lawyer and defended Michael in court. It only got him a three year sentence.

So the family comes back together for a reunion and greet Michael back a free man at the Sky Lodge, which honestly would have been enough to fuel the entire as the unraveling of the family's backstory demonstrates. Not only the various, individual backstories giving the book its title, but the overarching backstory in how the killing three years ago is connected to the death of Ernest and Michael's father. A small-time criminal who died in a shootout with the police decades ago. Neither the murder three years ago nor the shootout are quite what they seem as everything obfuscated by layers of lies, misunderstanding and misconceptions. All wrapped up as meta-mystery penned by someone who understands how to gracefully lie through your teeth without uttering a single untrue word. A talent that separated the likes of John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie and Christianna Brand from their contemporaries.

Normally, a crime novel or even a more traditionally-styled detective story focusing entirely on backstories is a huge red flag, as it rarely bodes well for the quality of the plot, but Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone simply turned the collection of backstories into the various, interconnected pieces of an intricately-designed, fairly clued puzzle plot. Impressively, it recreated the traditional whodunit without dragging out bodies-in-libraries or subversively secret passages, but the sordid, downright reprehensible crimes not often associated with the good, old-fashioned whodunit. So peeling away the layers surrounding the Cunningham family secrets alone would have been a compelling modern take on the classic mystery novel, but it's not just the past throwing up questions and mysteries. The reunion is interrupted when the unidentified body of a man, an outsider, is found under mysterious circumstances. A death that could be the handiwork of an active serial killer, "The Black Tongue," who already made three victims by employing a very unusual, terrifying murder method.

This only touches a fraction of the deeply rooted, widely branched family plot buried at the core of Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone streaked through with thrills and a couple of close calls. There was, in fact, so much going on I became skeptical how Stevenson intended to pull all the twisted, intertwined plot-threads together in such a way that had my fellow detective aficionados raving. Well, I suppose my fears were put aside when Ernest turned to the reader to give a list of all the clues, "to keep Ronald Knox happy," he used to put every piece in place. So everyone still alive gathers in the library where Ernest explains everything. Admittedly, there's a lot to explain and unpack, technically and emotionally, which slows down the pace a little. But absolutely necessary to digest everything properly. One, or two, things stretched things a little (ROT13: gur zvpebqbgf nxn “fcl fuvg”), but nothing detrimental to the plot, story or characters. I rather have a plot that's a little over indulgent in some places than threadbare. I really liked who the murderer turned out to be. I certainly had my suspicions against that person, but not that. Very, very cheeky!

So it can be said Stevenson succeeded Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone in creating a genuine, character-driven modernization of the plot-oriented Golden Age detective story, but I like to see it as a long overdue continuation of the traditional, fair play detective story. There have been glimpses over the decades of what the Golden Age detective story could have turned into had it not been slowly snuffed out during the post-WWII decades, which were often short-lived or somewhat hidden, but it looks like its time has finally come. Stevenson's Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone comes recommended as not only a superb detective novel, but as another step towards that Second Golden Age. I very much look forward to Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023), which is going to be short-tracked to the top of the big pile.