Benjamin Stevenson, an Australian stand-up comedian and mystery author, delivered two highlights of the current Golden Age revival, Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone (2022) and Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023), but had to wait with third Ernest Cunningham novel on account of it being a "Christmas Special" – springtime was too early (or too late) to read/review a Christmas mystery. I was tempted to put up a review of Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret (2024) during the summer, but decided to wait until the days started to shorten.
Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret begins a week before Christmas and Ernest is busy with Juliette planning their wedding when Ernest receives a plea for help from his ex-wife, Erin, who's been arrested on suspicion of murdering her new partner, Lyle Pearse – an ex-Hollywood actor turned philanthropist. Erin had woken up that morning to discover she was covered in blood, a bloody knife at the top of the stairs and Pearse lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. A dying message, "CHRISTMAS," scrawled on the floor with a bloody finger. So, having solved two murder sprees, Ernest travels to Katoomba to try prove Erin's innocence, but that's not as easy as she "stuck with the worst version of the story." That version involves first, of two, impossible situations Ernest encounters on his third case. Erin listens to white noise to fall asleep, "Tokyo Railway in the Rain," but she remains a very light sleeper. So, if the murder was a frame job, how could the murderer have dumped blood on Erin without waking her up? Admittedly, the impossibility is not as self apparent as described, kept wondering why Ernest called it an impossible murder, but the ending made it very apparent it can be counted as an impossible crime. And not a bad one, either! Just not as clearly stated as it could have been, however, the best is yet to come.
Lyle Pearse's abandoned his acting career and returned to Australia following the death of his brother, overdosed on bad drugs, which drove him to create a foundation to help ex-addicts get back on their feet – creating "long-lasting reform" by igniting passion. So many of the foundation's graduates of the program ended up working in theaters build by the foundation like The Pearse Theater in Katoomba. Every year, they have a tour with all of their success stories ending with a black-tie Christmas finale in Katoomba.
This year, the tour finale, now memorial, is headlined by the victim's friend and stage magician, Rylan Blaze. The big illusion of the night is a combination of the guillotine and bullet-catch trick. But by that time, Ernest has picked up enough bits and pieces of what could be clues that he believes the wax bullet had been swapped for a real bullet. And rushes the stage causing absolute pandemonium. Blaze is effectively trapped inside the guillotine, because the gun with presumably a live round has a laser trigger activated by movement. When the timer hits zero and the blade drops, Blaze's head rolled over the stage! Something that should be impossible, because the dangerous looking blade is nothing more than "flimsy paper." Ernest has his work cutout with two murders, two impossible crimes, a bloody dying messages, stockings worth of clues and a cast of suspects comprising of the magician's assistant, a stagehand, a hypnotist, twins and even a dead guy.
Now this probably doesn't sound a whole lot smaller in scope, or shorter, than the previous two novels, but it really is about the half shorter. Stevenson simply spun a great deal of complexity out of an ultimately simple case with skill and humor. Not just depending on the two impossible situation to give weight and bulk to the plot.
Firstly, there are the everyone and secrets from the book title. A festive, tinseled web of secrets complicating everything and beautifully making use of Christmas traditions, old and new. Secondly, gimmicky as it sounds, the advent calendar guarantees a richly-clued, fair play detective story with the clues forming, as John Dickson Carr described it, a pattern of evidence that, when put together, reveals the whole design – which is the hallmark of great detective fiction. So the advent calendar gimmick made the clueing even better. Not to mention Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret fulfills its obligation to actually do something with the story's holiday theme and found a way to use some Christmas traditions, old and new, to tell a detective story. And, yes, the solution to the impossible decapitation on stage is grand. Not terribly complicated or disappointingly simple and fairly original when it comes to inexplicable beheadings topped off with a memorable denouement when Ernest begins to eliminate his suspects, until the murderer remains. Where and how it happens is what makes it memorable. That poor guy is starting to look like a battered warhorse!
So as a modern, retro-GAD detective novel, Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret is a treat for the holidays with nothing to complain or nitpick about. Beside the story and an excellent plot, the main attraction of the series remains Ernest Cunningham as the narrator ("reliable narrator here"). Well, that and the return to the plotting standards of the Golden Age, but have taken a real liking to Ernest's narrative style. Like giving spoilers of what's ahead in the story, but his spoilers have all the quality of a wish granted by a monkey's paw. There's always a catch or twist. So to say I enjoyed Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret would be an understatement and had I read it last year, it would have easily made "The Naughty List: Top 12 Favorite Christmas Mystery Novels & Short Stories." If reading Christmas mysteries is one of your December traditions, Stevenson's Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret is as good as they come. I very much look forward to Everyone in This Bank is a Thief (2026).
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