Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (2023)
By Benjamin Stevenson
Penguin: Mariner Books, 366 pages.
★★★★
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone is the ultimate meta mystery. In 1930, several prominent British mystery writers–including G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha Christie–created a dinner group called the Detection Club. Author Benjamin Stevenson draws upon a lesser-remembered member, Ronald Knox, who developed a 10 Commandments for mystery writers. These are detailed in Stevenson’s foreword and include: Murder mysteries cannot involve supernatural or preternatural agency or have more than one secret room, and the detective’s clueless sidekick–think Dr. Watson–can only be very slightly less intelligent than the average reader.
Stevenson has written a very clever and snarky mystery involving the Cunningham family. He complies with Knox’s commandments and frequently breaks the fourth wall by telling us what he will do and what he won't. In other words, he messes with the entire mystery genre. There are no guns on the mantle–and certainly none of Chekhov's. Stevenson is the dominant voice and point of view of the novel, but you can forget about the unreliable narrator convention. Stevenson is so reliable that he seems unreliable! He tosses unexpected curves, but none are unforeseeable or illogical.
The title should be taken both broadly and literally. Stevenson doesn't mean that every Cunningham is a murderer–though some might be–merely that everyone in the family has committed acts in which someone dies. That alone makes them toxic, but they are especially so because paterfamilias Robert killed a policeman. A dead brother haunts the family, but the book's main character is Ernest. He is a candidate for the only “good” Cunningham, though–meta alert–he does write books about how to write detective books. His mother Audrey doesn’t think he’s good; she blames Ernest for betraying his brother Michael. But everyone in the family seems to have a screw or two loose. Audrey is now married to Marcelo, a snobbish money-obsessed attorney. Sofia, his daughter from a previous marriage, is a surgeon with a lawsuit hanging over her. Katherine, Ernest's aunt, is married to Andy and both are up to something. Maybe. Michael’s ex-wife Lucy has her own agenda, as does Erin, Ernest’s about-to-be ex-wife.
Does this sound like a group of people game for a family reunion at an Australian ski lodge? There's plenty that could go wrong and does. It begins when Ernest is about to drive up the mountain; policeman Darius Crawford issues him a traffic ticket. Ernest wends his way to a resort operated by Juliet to greet the other Cunninghams, though he’d rather be anywhere else. Crawford also shows up at the mountaintop just in time for a big storm to strand everyone whilst an unknown serial killer with a unique way of dispatching victims might or might not be practicing his art. There’s a competing resort on the other side of the mountain and several Cunninghams take a trail grooming machine to meet the McAuleys, whose daughter Rebecca was a murder victim. They are being continually extorted to be told of the location of her body, yet they seem content to pay for bad info.
Let's throw in a bag filled with lots of cash, no cell phone reception, false identities, unusual motives, lust, and enough Cunningham family drama to make the Corleone clan seem like Rotarians. Although little is quite what it seems to be, Stevenson guides us through the muck without violating any of Knox’s commandments. But he doesn’t make it easy. For example, when it seems obvious that a killer has been fingered, Stevenson breaks the fourth wall to direct attention to how much of the book remains, thus it’s way too early for such a revelation. After all, would Agatha Christie reveal a killer before the end of the book?
This is both a compelling mystery and a very funny book. It retains thrills and tension, despite the humor and in-your-face conventions. The effect of reading Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone is reminiscent of trying to solve a Rubik's Cube the first time you were handed one. Ironically, though Stevenson does a deep take-down of mysteries, he breathes new life into said genre. I can imagine that both readers and other writers will be equally enthralled by this book.
Rob Weir
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