Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone is the first Ernest Cunningham humorous mystery by Benjamin Stevenson. Released 17th Jan 2023 by HarperCollins on their Mariner imprint, it's 384 pages and is available in hardcover, large print paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This is such a clever and well rendered work full of quirky humor and giggle-out-loud prose. Everyone in narrator Ern's extended family (including in-laws, uncles, step-siblings, and siblings) has killed someone at some point. A family reunion at a ski-chalet is the perfect closed circle remote setting for murder. There have been comparisons to Clue and Knives Out, and those are both apt and inevitable. It's not at all derivative, but it does have the same vibes of whimsy and camp that are also present in the aforementioned.
It's an impressively wide ranging cast of characters, and although the book's first person narrative takes some effort, readers are well repaid in the form of fast, sharply funny, and perceptive commentary from the narrator. Ernie continually breaks the fourth wall, which some readers will find annoying and repetitive, and which seemed personally to be just on the right side of comedic.
Four stars. Well written, clever, at certain points sublimely funny, and entertaining.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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