― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

Rating

Break out the corkboard and red string; we have a mystery to solve. This book, which appears to be the first installment of a future series, was a 4.2 out of 5 stars for me. It felt like the marriage of the golden era of cozy mysteries with the new age of psychological thrillers. It is very well balanced between the two to keep fans of both genres satisfied and wanting more. 

Themes

As I said, this has many themes of a classic Holmes-style murder mystery. We, the reader and narrator, are set on an adventure to catch the killer. The story is full of family drama, red hearings, large sums of money up for grabs, personal vendettas, and secret (or not-so-secret) affairs. For those here for the psychological thriller aspect, the depictions of violence and/or death are more detailed or "creative" than what you might find in some older murder mysteries. It is a slow burn, but the suspense draws with each chapter. 

Plot Summary

There are many things to say about the Cunningham family, but conventional is not one of them. They are a rag-tag crew of degenerates, deceivers, narcissists, and crooks. Or at least that is the perception the world has of them. When the news reaches our narrator, Ernest, that the family will be reuniting in a remote ski lodge for a mandatory family reunion, he is filled with dread. 

Michael, Earnest's brother, would be released from prison at that time after serving a three-year prison sentence after Ernest testified against him for murder. Ernest had been, in many ways, the outcast of the Cunningham family for turning his back on his own and placing his brother in jail. If that were not enough to make for an awkward reunion, Ernest has secretly been holding a bag with over $100K in cash that he recovered after the events of the murder. 

The Cunninghams are not at the lodge very long before bodies begin to show up and suspicions begin to rise. There was much more to the murder that Michael committed than a bag of cash. Everyone in the family knows something, but nobody knows everything. Ernest takes it upon himself to piece together the past of the Cunningham family to make sense of the present. 

Thoughts

I am a massive fan of the mystery genre, so of course, I enjoyed this book. If you are a fan of Glass Onion or Knives Out, you will likely enjoy this, too. It has all the elements needed for a great mystery and makes many nods to other mystery authors. However, that is one of the things that took me out of the book at times. 

The narrator tends to "spike the lens" and tell you this will not be a cliche mystery novel. He claims he will not withhold information and will not be an unreliable narrator. This was all fine and good, but it was sometimes too much. It gave a pretension feeling that this story was far and away better than any others. 

The pacing was also rough at the beginning. The story moves slowly up until halfway through the second act. The chatty narrator gives long lines of exposition to set up the story, but I did not care enough about the characters at that point to pay attention. I also recommend breaking out a notepad to keep track of all the characters, as there are many, and their relation to each other can be very confusing. Even towards the end, I had to reference a guide to remember who was who and how they were involved. This is definitely not a read you can be extra casual about and pay little attention to. Thankfully, there are points in the story where the narrator attempts to catch you up and ensure you are still with them. 

Struggles aside, this is a very clever story, and despite the gripes I have with how it was told, I still enjoyed the delivery. I recommend it to any mystery lovers.