Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone

“I promised to be reliable, not competent”

I'm growing to really love crime fiction. I like detective stuff and I like Le Carre's spy stuff, and I picked this out after hearing the host of video game podcast Triple Click recommended it. Turns out it hooked me very quickly and is one of my favourite reads this year and I’ve been recommending it to anybody who’ll listen.

Benjamin Stevenson writes through narrator Ernie Cunningham. Ernie writes books about crime fiction, sort of how-to guides for ‘real writers’. In this book, Ernie gets sucked into a murder mystery of his own surrounding his infamous family - all of whom have or will take a life. They're not assassins or hitmen, the Cunninghams are mostly just at the wrong place at the wrong time, but trouble finds them when they gather together in a remote ski resort to celebrate Ernie's brother's release from prison - for which the family blame our hero.

Straight away Ernie endears himself to you by outlining the rules of crime fiction - he’s the expert after all - which were written during the Golden Age of Christie and Knox and from then and throughout the book he’s on your side. The story obeys the rules rigorously - the killer has to be mentioned in the first few chapters (they are), there can be no ghosts or unexplained phenomena (there aren’t) and the detective can’t find a clue without disclosing it to the reader. There will be no hand-waving, no artistic license and no cheating, just a thoroughly enjoyable, by-the-book murder mystery. Ernie is with you all the way with meta commentary, even so far as to tell you what pages every death in the book happens on. He wants you to figure it out. I didn’t for what it's worth, but I don’t think I’m wired like that, I think I just enjoyed the ride. It's an incredibly clever and witty book, I loved the conversational tone, and I started reading the sequel directly after finishing this - hungry for more from Stevenson.