Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson: Book Review

 

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once.
Have I killed someone? Yes. I have.

The first book in the Ernest Cunningham series, by Benjamin Stevenson, follows through on it's title and recounts the killings as a satirical play on the mysteries from the Golden Age. There are multiple mysteries, apart from the original event from a few decades ago that sets everything in motion, and kept me guessing (some correctly!). The setting for this book is an almost snowed-in family reunion and the book follows Ernest, the expert publisher of 10 Easy Steps to Write Crime Like You Lived in the 1930s and Golden Age to Your Golden Page: How to Write a Mystery, as he tries to unravel them before the body count gets too high.

The narrative style has a flippant humour that fans of Knives Out and/or Only murders in the building might relate to. We get plenty of Ernest's comments as he earnestly tries to follow Ronald Knox's ten rules for the murder mystery club. Having recently read a lot of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, I enjoyed this particular style of narration. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series!

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The rating is 3 1/2 stars, rounded up to 4 stars for Goodreads as the series is intriguing.

[3/4 star for the premise and the whole book; One star for the writing; Half a star for the characters; 3/4 star for the story; Half a star for the world-building/ description - 3 1/2 stars in total.]