Everyone This Christmas Has A Secret
Jun. 15th, 2025 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meteordustBy Benjamin Stevenson.
I'm going to sound like I'm damning this book with faint praise. But honestly its existence was a surprise and a delight to me.
I loved the first two Ernest Cunningham mysteries, which are basically love letters to the Golden Age murder mystery, but set in modern day Australia. (The first one at a family reunion at an isolated ski lodge in the Snowy Mountains, and the second one at a writers' festival on the legendary train the Ghan.)
I'd wondered when the next one would be coming out, but totally missed its release last December, appropriately in time for Christmas. In this book, Stevenson draws not only on the tropes of the murder mystery, but on another classic format - the holiday special.
With only a few days until Christmas, Ernest Cunningham is called upon to solve a murder connected to a stage magician. Which, I have to say, is a great hook.
The story is set in Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains, with lots of local landmarks and references. It takes place during a heatwave, and I love all the descriptions of what the Christmas season is like during the Australian summer. (Even though the one time I was in the Blue Mountains in summer, it was ridiculously cold and I had to wear a jumper.)
There are no shortage of murder suspects, but my main complaint is that we don't get to know them that well. This is a shorter book than the others, and it feels more lightweight, in part because the characters are more lightly drawn. Maybe it's all you need for a light beach read, or for, well, a holiday special. But it doesn't have the same emotional impact as the other books.
Still, the mystery is engaging enough, and the denouement is satisfying. There was a good balance of clues I could figure out, and clues that came as a clever reveal. The author lays them out as an advent calendar, which was thematically appropriate. As always, there's a lot of meta commentary about murder mysteries (and this time, holiday specials), which was sometimes laid on a bit thick, but whatever, that's what I'm here for.
I'm going to sound like I'm damning this book with faint praise. But honestly its existence was a surprise and a delight to me.
I loved the first two Ernest Cunningham mysteries, which are basically love letters to the Golden Age murder mystery, but set in modern day Australia. (The first one at a family reunion at an isolated ski lodge in the Snowy Mountains, and the second one at a writers' festival on the legendary train the Ghan.)
I'd wondered when the next one would be coming out, but totally missed its release last December, appropriately in time for Christmas. In this book, Stevenson draws not only on the tropes of the murder mystery, but on another classic format - the holiday special.
With only a few days until Christmas, Ernest Cunningham is called upon to solve a murder connected to a stage magician. Which, I have to say, is a great hook.
The story is set in Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains, with lots of local landmarks and references. It takes place during a heatwave, and I love all the descriptions of what the Christmas season is like during the Australian summer. (Even though the one time I was in the Blue Mountains in summer, it was ridiculously cold and I had to wear a jumper.)
There are no shortage of murder suspects, but my main complaint is that we don't get to know them that well. This is a shorter book than the others, and it feels more lightweight, in part because the characters are more lightly drawn. Maybe it's all you need for a light beach read, or for, well, a holiday special. But it doesn't have the same emotional impact as the other books.
Still, the mystery is engaging enough, and the denouement is satisfying. There was a good balance of clues I could figure out, and clues that came as a clever reveal. The author lays them out as an advent calendar, which was thematically appropriate. As always, there's a lot of meta commentary about murder mysteries (and this time, holiday specials), which was sometimes laid on a bit thick, but whatever, that's what I'm here for.
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Date: 2025-06-15 01:47 pm (UTC)I'll use a seasonally inappropriate icon, since I don't have any that fit with Australian summer Christmas...