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If the intro to this book doesn't hook you (and the intros are *slightly* different via audiobook/ebook/physical book which is amazing) then I don't know what will

#everyone in my family has killed someone #benjamin stevenson #book #audiobooks #Ernest Cunningham #mystery #comedy

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

“If a killer is ever revealed and your ‘percentage read’ isn’t at least in the high eighties, they cannot be the real killer; there is simply too much of the book still to be read.”

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Have you read Everyone in my Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (2022)?

yes

I didn't finish it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onNov 18, 2025

#everyone in my family has killed someone #benjamin stevenson #mystery #book poll #have you read this book poll #polls #requested

Mystery/Thriller Monday

I know that this is the fourth book in a series, but, I just couldn’t help myself (and, I may or may not have totally read it out of order as well, so, I can tell you that it’s okay to read this one first). But, that title. It drew me in, it made me have to read this book.

Ernest is a former mystery author and amateur detective. And he’s stuck in a locked bank with a robber which is also full of other thieves. Oh, and then there’s a murder, and, instead of thieves, that means that someone in the bank is a murderer. Can Ernest solve the crime, figure out who is stealing what, as well as who committed the murder? Oh, and do it all before the police come and rescue everyone?

It’s like a locked room story on steroids, with a ton of puzzle, wicked puzzle, thrown in for good measure. It was an interesting mystery and thriller and I could not put it down. A wicked fun read.

You may like this book If you Liked: The Last Dance by Mark Billingham, An Accidental Death by Peter Grainger, or The Creeping Hand Murder by Marueen Johnson

Everyone in This Bank Is a Thief by Benjamin Stevenson

#mysterythrillermonday #nmlRA #nevins memorial library #everyone in this banks is a thief #benjamin stevenson

JOMP BPC || January 5 || So Friggen' Funny: Ernest Cunningham Series by Benjamin Stevenson

#Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone #Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect #Benjamin Stevenson #Ernest Cunningham #jompbpc #justonemorepage #book photo challenge #books #book photography #book photo #Not out of void but out of chaos #currently reading the 2nd one and the only thing keeping me from laughing my way through in a day is my current nonfiction craving

You guys. This book is thus far delightful.

#Danielle talks books #everyone in my family has killed someone #benjamin stevenson

2025 Book Review #43 – Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson

I honestly don’t know how this series first ended up on my radar, but I found the first book in it to be enjoyably silly and mindless fun. Since I was going backpacking and would need some enjoyable beach read while well out of cell reception, I picked this up and – whatever its failings and missed opportunities – it did succeed at that with flying colours. I do not, honestly, think I would have enjoyed it much in many other contexts, but as fun disposable extruded genre product it did in fact fit the bill.

Following the events of the first book in the series – and the wild success of his book based upon them – Ernest Cunningham’s life has improved significantly. Dating the (now quite wealthy) former owner of the ski hill where it took place (and author of her own quite profitable memoir based on the whole serial killer thing), with a worryingly competent literary agent and a sizable advance on his next book – and even an invitation to the 50th Australian Mystery Writers convention, held aboard a luxurious historic train travelling directly across the continent. He hopes the event will be a cure for his crippling writer’s block and – as every other panellist seems to be trapped in a web of grudges with each other, and one of them drops dead in dramatic fashion – he does in fact get what he wished for.

So just as with Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (the first book in the series), this is an incredibly self-aware series, more genre pastiche that relies upon ones familiarity with and affection for various mystery tropes to really land than something that can be read naively. Incredibly self-aware and, for me at least, more than a bit insufferably so. All the cutesy asides about how what a coincidence it is that the events Ernest is living through so neatly match the pacing of a schlocky mystery novel, the asides reassuring the reader that he is a fair narrator and this is a fair mystery, the listing of how many times each suspect’s name has been used to help you guess who it will be and – it starts to grate, eventually. Whedonesque. Worse, it just feels like empty padding.

Which is a shame, because the core conceit of ‘a bunch of hackish mystery writers who all hate each other are in some isolated locale when the bodies start dropping’ is one I find incredibly charming. But it’s a difficult thing to keep that self-aware a premise form getting too meta and tongue-in-cheek to take even slightly seriously, and I found this went well over the line. Not to the point where it didn’t work as popcorn, but it wasn’t far off at points. Each character felt like little more than a one-line improv prompt and a series of secrets listed as bullet points, there were simultaneously b- c- and d-plot side-mysteries that fit together too neatly and perfectly for my suspension of disbelief but were never that interesting in their own right, and all the smirking at the camera meant there wasn’t really room for any of the plot points or character beats that were interesting to breath.

Iwas going to say that the end result was like a lesser Knives Out sequel, but that’s honestly unkind to the amount of charm and humour Benoit Blanc brings. The better comparison is to say it’s like an inexplicably Australian mid-season episode of Castle. Now I actually liked silly mid-season episodes of Castle as I watched them, so I really am being harsh here. But just, god, you could have done the same idea here so much better. I can see it in my dreams.

This is very clearly a post-#metoo book, which I mention because it’s really the only remotely interesting theme or ideological stance the book possesses. It’s not exactly graceful (okay, no, it is incredibly clumsily integrated at points) but at least its heart is in the right place?

Anyway yeah, this is a fun brainless beach book that did in fact eat up a pleasant couple of afternoons. I really can’t say too much for its virtues otherwise, besides the fact that beneath all the winking at the camera it is a competently executed fair play mystery. I just dearly wish that, if it was doing this, it went all-in and was less surface level in its understanding of the publishing industry and that the psychologies of the different writers/suspects were allowed to have a whole second dimension each.

#book review #2025 #21st century #Australian literature #mystery #everyone on this train is a suspect #Benjamin Stevenson