"Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone"

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

Book Club Pick

Pages: 366 Genre: mystery

Rating: 4.5 Stars

This is one of the most clever and unique mysteries I have read in a long time. Ernie Cunningham is no stranger to crime and mysteries. He's got a family reunion coming up, and while he's normally try to get out of it, his brother will be in attendance. The very brother he saw kill a man three years ago — and who he turned in. The night before his brother arrives, a man is found dead, frozen out in the snow. Except he seems to have died by fire, out in the snow, without burn marks. With no one identifying the body, and the local policeman getting antsy, Ernie knows it's up to him and all his familiarity with mysteries to solve the case. Unfortunately, he's also familiar with his family. And as he told us from the start: every one of them has killed someone.

The way this book is written is so brilliant and original. Ernie is writing the story after the fact, and in the prologue he promises you to be honest to the extent that he knew at the time. He makes this promise by telling you every single page number where there's going to be a death. And then he continues to reference those numbers throughout the book, along with other witty quips about what's coming up. It's such a unique way to tell a story — a mystery, no less — that it really required the story to hold itself up, and it does. Ernie also sort of messes with us: he's a mystery aficionado who also knows the how this story plays out, and he will remind you of both things a lot.

While I loved Ernie and his narration, there were some times that it felt like Stevenson was working a little bit too hard to convince me that Ernie was smart and intelligent. Like, seemingly going out of his way to use unique language for things that really weren't that complicated. Ernie's intelligence was clear enough throughout, we didn't need to work so hard on the narration level.

It is worth noting that Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone works better if you let it be a story that unfolds before you rather one that you try to solve. And I know that's not as fun with mysteries, but trust me, it's better to let Ernie take you along for the ride. A couple of the plots from the past can get a little confusing, especially if you try to put together a complete picture before Ernie actually knows everything.

A book with this title also promises good quality characters, and I believe it delivered on that. All of the characters felt very normal. With an ensemble cast, it can be easy for authors to fall back on stereotypes or two dimensional characters, but Stevenson did a good job at ensuring all his characters felt like authentic people. Stevenson also successfully balanced the family being both suspects and victims.

If you are a mystery fan, I really would recommend this book. It's such a unique take on a locked-room mystery, and I think fans of the genre would really appreciate the way it plays off of the typical expectations. A fair warning, though: Ernie uses the "10 Commandments of Detective Fiction" so thoroughly that you might be able to predict every mystery you read after. But honestly? It's worth it.