(courtesy Penguin Books Australia)
If you have ever wondered, and if not, why not, what might happen if Agatha Christie suddenly turn into a self aware meta murder solving detective, then you need to run, not walk, avoiding pools of blood from the victims, to the wonderfully funny but immensely satisfying books of Benjamin Stevenson.
Already the author of two runaway bestselling crime novels, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone and Everyone on This Train is a Suspect (yet to escape the TBR), Stevenson has that rare ability to both celebrate the genre of which he is unequivocally a part while affectionately and comprehensively skewering it too.
It’s a gift, and one he employs to highly enjoyable perfection once again in Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson which tells a rivetingly good tale of murder at the most wonderful time of the yer (not so much for the victims, to be fair) while having an absolutely delightful time playing merry with the conventions of Christmas specials.
Stevenson even remarks in the prologue, once he has made it clear that Australians do not experience stereotypical pop culture Christmases – no snow, more murders is his amusing claim – that Christmas specials have certain rules which must be observed such as festive theming, cameos from regular characters (if they appear at all) and no deaths of the the same because while the stories are canon, they are also somewhat set apart from the normal series of which they are a part.
‘So what do you think?’ [redacted] summoned a sad smile. ‘ Reckon you can solve another impossible murder?’
‘I think,’ I said standing, ‘your story sucks.’
Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret is very much stitched into the world of Stevenson’s first two Ernest Cunningham novels, a Sydney-based amateur detective and actual mystery writer who comes from a family with a fairly checkered past when it comes to staying on the right side of the law.
The first novel’s title and storyline directly references this, and Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret continues to have fun with the idea when a family member, not as closely woven in as they once were, calls him and summons him to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney where they have an ISSUE.
No more can be said because shhhhh spoilers but suffice to say, it doesn’t escape Ernest aka Ern, who’s on the verge of marrying the very lovely and ridiculously understanding Juliette, that his family predisposes him to never have an easy life and to be the one, mystery writing aside, knows full well what goes through the mind of people who dance right across onto the wrong side of the law.
Ernest has the experience but also the brightness to notice things, and his gift for solving crimes has not only helped solved two big crimes (see novels one and two if you will) but put him on the celebrity radar with one journalist of dubious distinction, Josh Felman, who is quickly on his way to becoming Ernest’s nemesis, again another trope of the genre which Stevenson has some fun with to great effect.
As Ernest tries to solve the murders that take place, and in the process hopefully exonerate the family member caught in a call at Katoomba police station, he wryly notes that there are a number of festive special tropes he must observe (even if, sometimes, he notes apologetically, he plays a bit fast and loose with them, just as he does with the rules of non-festive crime solving).
These include, in addition to those noted above, that the crime must be committed and be solved within a set time window such as by Christmas or New Year’s Eve, the killer can’t hate Christmas and the true meaning of Christmas must be learnt because what good is a seasonal setting if it washes like Teflon off a murder-solving detective’s soul?
There are more on the list, but suffice to say that the constant references to these Christmas special commandments, act as both a guardrail to the narrative but also as an assurance to readers that while the murders might go wide, big and dark, that they will stay within certain lanes and finish up in certain ways.
So, while Stevenson might self-referentially refer to his absolute rules in a quirkily funny manner, a self-aware knowingness in play at all times, he’s also quite serious about them, meaning that while he’s going all comically meta, he’s also telling a very serious and satisfying murder mystery too.
That’s the joy of his Ernest Cunningham novels – you get the affectionate skewering but you also get the solid crime story, the best of all worlds.
I’m going to chalk up what happened next as a Christmas miracle. I headed downstairs to place [redacted]’s mug on the kitchen sink. As I stepped into the kitchen the sun was slicing through the windows, making me squint as it glanced off the white marble benchtops. On the floor, past the blood, the ray of light settled on a corner. And there I saw a little twinkle.
Rather delightfully, Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret is cloaked in festive colours and has its 24 chapters correspond to the standard number of windows on an advent calendar, such that, says Stevenson, again in the prologue:
If you start on 1 December and take a chapter a day, you’ll have it all solved by Christmas Eve, but it’s not like I’m going to supervise. Many people like to eat all the chocolates all at once.
Like this reviewer, who read six chapters in one go before devouring the rest in a final sitting, proof that while you have the option to be patient and read Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret as the author suggests, you will most likely be compelled by the novel’s sheer breezy readability, to devour all your “chocolates” in one hugely satisfying go.
Thankfully, unlike the effects of real chocolate consumed en masse, reading Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret will only fill you with delight as you concentrate your mind to solve the crime – for all the years of reading these kinds of novels, this reviewer remains hugely unable to connect all the dots but it’s still lots of fun trying – relish the way in which Ernest gets to the bottom of things, and glory in the festiveness of it all, yes even whole blood is spilled, lives are ruined and justice and the season hang perilously in the festive balance.