Last year, I tried the first of Benjamin Stevenson's Ernest Cunningham novels after some initial skepticism, but Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone (2022) sold me on Benjamin's hilarious, classically-styled meta whodunits and quickly followed it up with Everyone on This Train is a Suspect (2023) and eventually Everyone This Christmas has a Secret (2024) – bridging the gap with the non-series Last One to Leave (2022). Benjamin dominated "Murder in Retrospect: The Best and Worst of 2025" as my find of the year. Only drawback to writers from this early, burgeoning second Golden Age is that you can't dip into their complete body of work at your leisure. We now have to wait for the next one to be written and published.
Everyone in This Bank is a Thief opens with Ernest Cunningham, mystery fiction expert and amateur detective, trapped inside a bank vault with about fifteen hours of oxygen left to go and decides to write down everything that happened up until his imprisonment – basically a record scratch, freeze frame with the text "you're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation." So how did he end up trapped inside a sealed vault? Ernest wanted to put his experience and successes as an amateur detective into practical use by starting his own detective agency, but he and his fiancee, Juliette, have been unable to secure a business loan to get started. From Sydney to Perth, they have been turned down by every bank and even a shady, diamond-toothed loans shark called their business plan high risk. So it was an unexpected break when they received an invitation from Winston Huxley, owner of Huxley's Bank, "one of the oldest family-owned banks in the country."
So they travel to the old gold mining town of Huxley, but it turns out Winston Huxley wants Ernest to do a job. Huxley's brother, Edward, is co-director and head of security who changed the code of the bank vault in the basement before disappearing. Now they can't get to the cash or safety deposit boxes to serve their rural, old-fashioned customers and could seriously damage their reputation if it gets out. Ernest needs a bank loan and Huxley needs a detective ("open my vault, and I'll open your agency"). A good deal, however, when they leave his office to get to work, they find someone in a black hoodie, fencing mask and gun holding up the teller. One push of the panic button, the alarms started wailing and shutters came down trapping everyone inside the bank. Ernest and Juliette become two of the bank robber's instant hostages as the police and media begin to gather outside.
This group of hostages consist of the security guard, Felix, the new receptionist, Michelle, a movie producer, Remy Allard, a teenage gaming streamer, Eric, a priest who doesn't speak, Father Gabriel, and a young, dying girl and her caring grandmother, Cordelia and Laverna. And, of course, the director himself. Ernest calls himself a reliable narrator who writes the complete, accurate truth and that goes for the book title. Everyone present is planning to steal something, one thing or another, but "not everyone is conducting a full-on heist" ("that would be ridiculous"). This gives way to a pleasing, increasingly entangled plot, developments and complications. For example, the masked bank robber demands a single dollar from the inaccessible bank vault and cracking the new code is one of Ernest many headaches. And, if things aren't complicated enough, someone gets murdered under seemingly impossible circumstances. A case of apparent case of spontaneous human combustion in front of Ernest that turns his fellow hostages in potential suspects. What he decides to do next also makes him a bit an amateur idiot. And that's a plus for the overall story!
Like I said in previous reviews of this series, Stevenson understands how to lie through his teeth without writing a single untrue word coupled with the comedians touch to exaggerate in order to clarify, which I consider to be invaluable tools for writing and plotting mysteries – especially when handling a dozen different plot-threads. It also allows to stretch things just a little without doing any actual damage to the plot or characters. I mean, I loved the bit with the parrot ("I am not a clue").
So the plot never became muddled and the story remained crystal clear as the various, sometimes intertwined, plot-threads slowly get picked apart. I particularly liked Ernest solution for "the world’s slowest bank robbery," one of the individual problems, but Stevenson practically delivers on all of them with the overall solution tying everything to the central plot taking the whole cake. Only time I thought Stevenson was stretching things a bit too far was (ROT13) gung gur cybg unf gjb pbzcyrgryl vaqrcraqrag pnfrf bs fcbagnarbhf uhzna pbzohfgvba, but other than that, Everyone in This Bank is a Thief is another superbly done, retro-GAD novel. A retro-GAD novel with an atypical framing and backdrop for a classically-styled detective novel, but one that feels "deliciously old-fashioned" in this day and age. Ernest, our always reliable, resourceful narrator and one of the Great Detectives of this Golden Age revival, is really starting to resemble a battered, scarred warhorse. I fear Stevenson is going to turn him into a nine-lives cat and the series by killing him off in the tenth book.
Fortunately, the fifth Ernest Cunningham novel won't be out for at least another year and a tenth novel not before 2032 or 2033. See how handily I turned that pesky luxury problem into neat coping mechanism?
Anyway, it's amazing a series like this was a mere pipe dream only 10, 15 years ago and now they keep rolling off the press. So you can expect Everyone in This Bank is a Thief to make an appearance on my 2026 best-of list and I'll bridge the gap to the next Ernest Cummingham novel with Stevenson's Either Side of Midnight (2020) and Find Us (2021). Stay tuned!
