Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret
Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret (Ernest Cunningham #3)
By: Benjamin Stevenson
“A woman covered in blood who doesn’t remember how it got on her. And a man decapitated… by a piece of paper.”
Earlier this year I read Stevenson’s book Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone and really enjoyed the ‘Golden Age’ fair play whodunnit mystery. It was clever and funny and I enjoyed his writing.
This Christmas mystery is the third book in the series— I’ll have to go back and read the one on the train next year— and was the same good experience.
It definitely had the Christmas vibes. Stevenson even cleverly organized the clues like an advent calendar.
“If you start on December first and take a chapter a day, you’ll have it all solved by Christmas Eve.”
I didn’t want to keep myself to only one chapter a day, but I could see how that could be a fun way to read it as well. Here’s a picture of the clues— I don’t think it gives anything away.
“Tinsel-draped as the corpses may be, this is still a fair play mystery. You’ll find no hidden clues or unreliable narrators here. My job is to relay to you everything you need to reach the same ‘lightbulb’ moment as I did.”
In this book we have the same first-person narrator— Ernest— who has at this time now solved a couple mysteries and has made a little name for himself.
He is brought into this case by his ex-wife Erin who has been accused of murdering her partner Lyle. After all, she was caught, literally, red-handed. With his blood. And no recollection of doing anything.
“She wouldn’t be the first member of my family to have killed someone.”
Lyle ran a theater run by recovering addicts whose headliner right now is a magician. This is the backdrop to Ernest’s investigation when a second murder occurs.
“There are quite a few differences between an Australian Christmas and the stereotypical Northern Hemisphere fare seen in most books and movies. For one thing, we don’t get snow down under. What we do get, in my specific experience, is more murders.”
There are 23 clues and I think I figured out most of it by just one of those clues and fairly early on in the book. But obviously I didn’t know if my hunch was correct until the end. And there were some aspects of the solving that I missed so I’m glad it was more complex than I thought.
And I was questioning this claim that Ernest makes at the beginning until I realized… he really did do this.
“And of course, by the end of these things, the detective has to learn the true meaning of the word Christmas.”
Lastly, a quote that is fitting for New Year’s as well:
“Confessions are like morning gym sessions: you have a finite window to commit to one and it gets harder to summon the courage once you miss it.”
More lastly than that, here are couple Australian terms I learned:
punters: gamblers; one might argue that being a football punter in America is a gamble in itself
scream blue murder: not to be confused with ‘screaming bloody murder’ though it means the exact same thing, but in this case the hypothetical murder isn’t bloody, it’s more just sad I guess
Recommendation
There’s not a lot to cover in a book like this. It’s pretty straightforward, clean cut, and enjoyable. Nothing that shocks the pants off ya, but definitely not a snooze fest either.
And if a mystery can incorporate Comic Sans into the plot, it’s basically genius.
I would definitely recommend this unless you refuse to read books without a sadistic psychopath and blood everywhere. Although there is blood… I mean a man was DECAPITATED!
Just an enjoyable read and I’ll say it again: I enjoyed it. You probably will too. Especially at Christmas time.
If you are looking for another Christmas thriller also try Christmas Presents by Lisa Unger.
[Content Advisory: 1 f-word, 7 s-words; no sexual content]
This book just released October 22, 2024. You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
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