BENJAMIN STEVENSON Everyone This Christmas Has A Secret. Reviewed by Naomi Manuell

The author of Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone returns with another witty homage to the Golden Age of crime fiction.

There’s a whiff of unseriousness around some whodunnits. Many readers still think of the form as stuck in detective fiction’s Golden Age with their Cluedo-style country house tropes and tendency to value intricate plotting over social realism or nuanced characterisation. But the whodunnit never disappeared, despite the diverse ways crime fiction evolved after the Golden Age. More recently, it has even enjoyed something of a resurgence in the broader culture with Rian Johnson’s hit films Knives Out and Glass Onion.   

In 2022, Benjamin Stevenson made a huge splash with Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone, which introduced self-described ‘reliable narrator’ and amateur sleuth, Ernest Cunningham. The book became a bestseller around the world and there’s currently a television adaptation in development with HBO from the producers who brought Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies to the screen.

Everyone This Christmas Has A Secret is the third Ernest Cunningham book (the second was Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect) although it can easily be enjoyed as a standalone work. In this case, it’s a ‘Holiday Special’ with the plot unfolding in the Blue Mountains in the days leading up to Christmas. The book is even structured like an advent calendar, with clues neatly parcelled out in 24 chapters or, as Ernest puts it, ‘Clues based on chocolate consumption’.  Of course, he also points out the irony that ‘this book may be wrapped under a tree at some point’. It’s all so gloriously ‘meta’ that it’s not a stretch to imagine Penguin’s marketing department planning a tie-in advent calendar as an in-store promotion to entice Christmas shoppers. (And if they’re not, there’s still time.)

 By book three, Ernest Cunningham is hitting his stride as a fictional sleuth. As a self-described ‘minor celebrity’ he’s even in the sights of muckraking reporter Josh Felman, who dubs him ‘the slapdash sleuth’:

‘Leave me alone Josh,’ I said, swatting away the microphone. He was, as always, sweating and out of breath. His thinning red hair was glued to his head like a child’s art project. Felman’s entire personality was I’ve just arrived.

In the spirit of another great fictional detective, Felman also fits the role of Watson to Ernest’s Holmes. That is, ‘if Watson was out to discredit Holmes and wasn’t a particularly great speller’.  Luckily, Felman is in on the joke as well:

‘You’re a series detective now. You have a canon. Which means’ — he spun his fingers in the air — ‘you’re due a nemesis.’

Ernest rushes to the Blue Mountains after his ex-wife Erin is arrested for the murder of her boyfriend, Hollywood actor-turned-philanthropist Lyle Pearse. Lyle is stabbed to death, ‘stomach like a dropped birthday cake’ and poor Erin wakes up the next day covered in his blood. Convinced of her innocence, Ernest heads to the local theatre ahead of a gala magic show and the curtain lifts on our cast of suspects. However, because he’s now such a seasoned sleuth, Ernest is also beginning to feel the weight of reader expectation:

… it isn’t enough to do the grand showdown reveal at the end anymore. When you’re in a series, the detective has to prove their worth early on with a little bit of inspecting razzle dazzle.

There are plenty of nods to the conventions of Golden Age fiction, particularly the so-called Ten Commandments of Ronald Knox — a mystery writer and contemporary of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. Knox’s tenth commandment was ‘Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.’  So when twin sisters appear in Everyone This Christmas Has A Secret, our reliable narrator Ernest is at pains to argue the exception:

Twins are only unfair in a mystery if they aren’t introduced honestly to the reader. That’s to protect from the dreaded switch twist.  

This book is funny and fast-paced enough to be knocked off in the haze of a post-Christmas stupor. But make no mistake, Benjamin Stevenson knows his way around an ingenious murder plot. The ‘black tongue’ murders in Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone are some of the more original and disturbing I’ve encountered in crime fiction in recent years. The murder plots in Stevenson’s new book demonstrate he is still overflowing with ideas as gruesome as they are hilarious.

The mystery’s resolution is reasonably satisfying. There’s a suspenseful and cleverly staged climax which, if this book also makes it onto the screen, should take full advantage of the stunning but treacherous Blue Mountains backdrop. In the meantime, Everyone This Christmas Has A Secret is a very entertaining book, perfect for a light summer read.

Benjamin Stevenson Everyone This Christmas Has A Secret Penguin 2024 HB 240pp $29.99

Naomi Manuell is a Melbourne writer. She is currently shortlisted in this year’s Sisters in Crime Scarlett Stiletto Awards.

You can buy Everyone This Christmas Has A Secret from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.

You can also check if it is available from Newtown Library.

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Tags: Australian authors, Australian crime fiction, Benjamin | Stevenson, Blue Mountains, Golden Age crime fiction, whodunnits