Likely Stories - "Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone" by Benjamin Stevenson

It’s a quirky and sometimes dark comedy set on the ski slopes of Australia in a wacky family situation with a killer along for the ride and the main character as the narrator who is often more worried about what his editor will think than the murder at hand.

Everyone has a back story.

The Cunningham family is quite a crew, there’s a quiet addict; an uptight aunt, a lawyer father with a large and overly expensive Rolex, and a domineering mother who treats her grown adult children, like children, the moment they arrive at the dining table. And that’s just the highlights of the family suspects.

As our narrator Ernest tells us, “look we’re not a family of psychopaths. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic but it’s the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate.”

Even in all this, the family is fiercely loyal, as families can be.

As the blizzard on the ski slope provides cover for homicide and deceit, Ernest as our author and narrator, highlights clues and reminds us of previous ones as we go through the story with him. He’ll tell us that the next body will show up on page 87 and that’s exactly what happens. It’s convoluted with a mystery wrapped inside a mystery and several other stories and it won’t disappoint.

While Poirot was so pleased to keep it all to himself in his little grey cells, Ernest helps the reader along.

I was in love with this book from the opening pages, really from the title.

The story is so much fun. Full of surprises and confusion...in a good way. I adored how Ernest would stop, turn to the reader, let us in on a clue, a secret, or some really good gossip about the family.

The characters are complex like our real life families. The Cunningham’s love each other, but the family drama is deep. They are loyal and backstabbing, no pun intended, all at the same time.

The book is clever and humorous with lots of twists that reveal more than the murders but the why of it all.

I don’t want to spoil the book for you but when I was finished reading I pulled out a piece of paper and made a chart. Low and behold, everyone in that family had killed someone.

The book is brilliant and I cannot recommend it enough. It is equal parts laugh out loud funny and one riddle after another that needs to be solved.

‘Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone’ a novel by Benjamin Stevenson, go get it!

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