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A review by hannahstohelit
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
medium-paced
3.0
I wanted to like this one SO much better than I did. But it just did not work on me.
Let me take a step back. (And here I acknowledge that my writing style is, irritatingly enough, way more like that of the extremely annoying narrator than I'd like it to be, but such is life and this is just a review that few if anyone will read, so not going to make too much of an effort about it.)
Re my note about writing style, I'm going to acknowledge that if I'd enjoyed the writing more, it's possible I'd have overlooked some of the other structural flaws I saw in the book more than I did, and vice versa. But the writing was kind of irritating, and to me never got above "basically competent"- at that competent level, a full book's worth of prose would have basically been fine or rather unnoticeable, but it dipped below that enough that it got grating. All the characters' dialogue sounded identical, the narrator kept on infodumping and making excessively-descriptive comments about the characters that made me want to scream "show don't tell!", and quite frankly, for a writer who was so gung-ho about aping the golden age detective story, this book was really missing a dramatis personae at the beginning and/or a family tree.
Again, if the central conceit behind the book had worked better, then I probably wouldn't care so much about that. After all, The Honjin Murders is a great Japanese mystery novel where the writing/translation style bugged me but its use of, and clear love of, the golden age mystery canon (not just name-dropping, but engaging with tropes) was actually an upside. It felt like a love letter, vs this felt like a wiki walk- or more like a nerd dump, putting as much info about a topic of interest into the book as possible just because the author found it in research and finds it interesting. I mean, I'm a huge nerd, and I do these all the time, where I am really interested in something so I just ramble about it. And people listening to me get annoyed, and that's the emotion I get when reading books like this where random info dumps about completely extraneous information are put into the mouths of characters/narrators. It's one of the least realistic things- the idea that all the other characters find them fascinating...
If the mystery references had been better, or deeper cuts, or more interesting, then maybe I'd have cut it more slack. But saying the name "Chesterton" and saying that Mary Westmacott is Agatha Christie or knowing that Ronald Knox wrote the Decalogue is really basic, and none of it actually matters. But actually here we get to the bigger issue, which is that I can't tell whether it's the narrator or Stevenson who doesn't understand what the Decalogue is for. It (not to mention the Detection Club oath) wasn't actually a rule book, wasn't actually used by writers to determine if something was fair play. It was meant to be descriptive, by someone who is not just being a writer but a critic, in its depiction of what made a bad book bad, not prescriptive in terms of what made a good book good*. Relying excessively on twins and secret passages was a sign of sloppy potboiler writing and meant that the odds were that the rest of the book was equally sloppy (and relying on "Chinamen," incidentally, as the redacted rule in the front of the book omits, meant that you were likely both sloppy and racist, per Knox), but if you were a good writer you could break the rules all over the place. And lots of them did!
*Knox was also not the only writer to do this- SS Van Dine, who wrote the Philo Vance books, wrote a list of twenty rules for detective stories, which were broken even more frequently than Knox's, if only because there were more of them.
In fact, I'd argue that Agatha Christie broke one (well, many more than one, but one in particular)- and Stevenson breaks the same one, probably in tribute but also seemingly without knowing he's doing it. When I specify one from Christie, I don't meanRoger Ackroyd even though Knox, in the full Decalogue (which is far longer than the abbreviated one that Stevenson reprints, and, as far as I can tell, is the only one he's aware of), singles that book out as cleverly breaking Rule 1. I mean Hercule Poirot's Christmas . After all, the solution to this book is almost exactly the same, and the introduction of the murderer- AFTER the (first) murder is discovered- is done in a very similar way. The real violation in spirit, IMO, is the idea that the murderer is someone we're introduced to in the beginning, with the rest of the cast of characters. In both Hercule Poirot's Christmas and this book, this is untrue, and while the exact definition of "the early part of the story" may be vague, I like to think that the discovery of the victim is where most mysteries move from the "early part" to the "early middle," so to speak.
But that's the thing- it's fine that Stevenson broke that rule (if he did, and it's fine if others disagree). Those rules were made to be broken, as indicated by Knox's admiring reference to Christie's early breakage before the Decalogue. And here, frankly, is where IMO Stevenson hamstrung himself, because his biggest mistake in paying too much attention to the Decalogue, and implying that it is actually a rulebook for writing a detective story, is that he does not understand the concept of the Watson and why that rule is "in place." In fact, Knox himself says that stories do not NEED to have a Watson (again, in the longer version of the Decalogue which there is no indication that Stevenson read), and choosing to call himself one in such a way that implies that we see every one of his thoughts, while also making him the detective who must see and show every clue, leads to a massive pile up- a reveal in which the narrator, who again has been telling us that he's been showing us each and every one of his thoughts, implies that in one moment everything became clear. And then gave us the longest, most complicated solution which contains multiple separate parts,the unmasking of a seemingly-dead imposter , and a whole bunch of other unlikely elements that as far as we knew had never even crossed his mind before. It was just not believable.
This problem had occurred to other authors- which is why they either don't have a full-POV character, have one who is not the detective, or just structure the mystery differently. Some examples- Dorothy L Sayers, in foregrounding Lord Peter Wimsey as the POV character in some stories, has been accused of writing books that were less whodunnits and more howcatchems because she has Wimsey, as the POV character, tell us about his deductions as he is making them, making it more of a journey for that one piece of proof than an actual "sit around the library fire for the revelation of the killer" book. In Agatha Christie novels where Poirot or Miss Marple is the main character, POV shifts happen between characters such that it's not as obvious that the detective is seeing things but not sharing with the reader what they are seeing. In the more screwball type mysteries by Craig Rice that I happened to also be reading this weekend, in addition to having multiple POV detectives (some of whom pull double duty as Watsons), she has each of them learn different things at different times and structures the clue breadcrumbs in such a way that by the end, the detective has really only hidden one big thought from us- but it's that one big thought that is the key to the mystery for the dramatic denouement.
Here, though, Ern is meant to be both detective and Watson, an impossible task while also keeping an intricate mystery completely mysterious. He somehow had everything coalesce together in one moment, and by the way not just as an outsider detective who is objectively putting pieces together about an impersonal case but asa bereaved and traumatized man who has discovered that another character is his younger brother AND the murderer, his cousin is in recovery for drugs, and his stepfather tried to kill him, among other things . We're expected to believe that it all fell together at once with no prior connections made?! If we are, then that's unbelievable; if we aren't, then Stevenson broke his own rules, which he didn't need to make in the first place, because the Decalogue isn't that important.
I gave the book 3 stars because the mystery WAS interesting, and DID contain a nice Christie tribute. The writing wasn't great, but could have been worse, and the story is certainly creative and the clues are, mostly, well planted. (It requires suspension of disbelief, but so do all the best of these kinds of stories- it's what makes them fun!) But as a real love story to the Golden Age, it made no sense. Besides for the completely unattributed Christie tribute, it showed only a very general and unapplied knowledge of some random trappings of the era/genre, not of the actual kinds of stories and plots that were a part of it- it was like Stevenson was name-dropping authors and reciting trivia rather than incorporating it into anything interesting. And the use in the construction of the mystery felt like Stevenson making things harder for himself than they needed to be. Without all of the cute clue-labeling and thought-revealing, the book would have been far more satisfying.
Let me take a step back. (And here I acknowledge that my writing style is, irritatingly enough, way more like that of the extremely annoying narrator than I'd like it to be, but such is life and this is just a review that few if anyone will read, so not going to make too much of an effort about it.)
Re my note about writing style, I'm going to acknowledge that if I'd enjoyed the writing more, it's possible I'd have overlooked some of the other structural flaws I saw in the book more than I did, and vice versa. But the writing was kind of irritating, and to me never got above "basically competent"- at that competent level, a full book's worth of prose would have basically been fine or rather unnoticeable, but it dipped below that enough that it got grating. All the characters' dialogue sounded identical, the narrator kept on infodumping and making excessively-descriptive comments about the characters that made me want to scream "show don't tell!", and quite frankly, for a writer who was so gung-ho about aping the golden age detective story, this book was really missing a dramatis personae at the beginning and/or a family tree.
Again, if the central conceit behind the book had worked better, then I probably wouldn't care so much about that. After all, The Honjin Murders is a great Japanese mystery novel where the writing/translation style bugged me but its use of, and clear love of, the golden age mystery canon (not just name-dropping, but engaging with tropes) was actually an upside. It felt like a love letter, vs this felt like a wiki walk- or more like a nerd dump, putting as much info about a topic of interest into the book as possible just because the author found it in research and finds it interesting. I mean, I'm a huge nerd, and I do these all the time, where I am really interested in something so I just ramble about it. And people listening to me get annoyed, and that's the emotion I get when reading books like this where random info dumps about completely extraneous information are put into the mouths of characters/narrators. It's one of the least realistic things- the idea that all the other characters find them fascinating...
If the mystery references had been better, or deeper cuts, or more interesting, then maybe I'd have cut it more slack. But saying the name "Chesterton" and saying that Mary Westmacott is Agatha Christie or knowing that Ronald Knox wrote the Decalogue is really basic, and none of it actually matters. But actually here we get to the bigger issue, which is that I can't tell whether it's the narrator or Stevenson who doesn't understand what the Decalogue is for. It (not to mention the Detection Club oath) wasn't actually a rule book, wasn't actually used by writers to determine if something was fair play. It was meant to be descriptive, by someone who is not just being a writer but a critic, in its depiction of what made a bad book bad, not prescriptive in terms of what made a good book good*. Relying excessively on twins and secret passages was a sign of sloppy potboiler writing and meant that the odds were that the rest of the book was equally sloppy (and relying on "Chinamen," incidentally, as the redacted rule in the front of the book omits, meant that you were likely both sloppy and racist, per Knox), but if you were a good writer you could break the rules all over the place. And lots of them did!
*Knox was also not the only writer to do this- SS Van Dine, who wrote the Philo Vance books, wrote a list of twenty rules for detective stories, which were broken even more frequently than Knox's, if only because there were more of them.
In fact, I'd argue that Agatha Christie broke one (well, many more than one, but one in particular)- and Stevenson breaks the same one, probably in tribute but also seemingly without knowing he's doing it. When I specify one from Christie, I don't mean
But that's the thing- it's fine that Stevenson broke that rule (if he did, and it's fine if others disagree). Those rules were made to be broken, as indicated by Knox's admiring reference to Christie's early breakage before the Decalogue. And here, frankly, is where IMO Stevenson hamstrung himself, because his biggest mistake in paying too much attention to the Decalogue, and implying that it is actually a rulebook for writing a detective story, is that he does not understand the concept of the Watson and why that rule is "in place." In fact, Knox himself says that stories do not NEED to have a Watson (again, in the longer version of the Decalogue which there is no indication that Stevenson read), and choosing to call himself one in such a way that implies that we see every one of his thoughts, while also making him the detective who must see and show every clue, leads to a massive pile up- a reveal in which the narrator, who again has been telling us that he's been showing us each and every one of his thoughts, implies that in one moment everything became clear. And then gave us the longest, most complicated solution which contains multiple separate parts,
This problem had occurred to other authors- which is why they either don't have a full-POV character, have one who is not the detective, or just structure the mystery differently. Some examples- Dorothy L Sayers, in foregrounding Lord Peter Wimsey as the POV character in some stories, has been accused of writing books that were less whodunnits and more howcatchems because she has Wimsey, as the POV character, tell us about his deductions as he is making them, making it more of a journey for that one piece of proof than an actual "sit around the library fire for the revelation of the killer" book. In Agatha Christie novels where Poirot or Miss Marple is the main character, POV shifts happen between characters such that it's not as obvious that the detective is seeing things but not sharing with the reader what they are seeing. In the more screwball type mysteries by Craig Rice that I happened to also be reading this weekend, in addition to having multiple POV detectives (some of whom pull double duty as Watsons), she has each of them learn different things at different times and structures the clue breadcrumbs in such a way that by the end, the detective has really only hidden one big thought from us- but it's that one big thought that is the key to the mystery for the dramatic denouement.
Here, though, Ern is meant to be both detective and Watson, an impossible task while also keeping an intricate mystery completely mysterious. He somehow had everything coalesce together in one moment, and by the way not just as an outsider detective who is objectively putting pieces together about an impersonal case but as
I gave the book 3 stars because the mystery WAS interesting, and DID contain a nice Christie tribute. The writing wasn't great, but could have been worse, and the story is certainly creative and the clues are, mostly, well planted. (It requires suspension of disbelief, but so do all the best of these kinds of stories- it's what makes them fun!) But as a real love story to the Golden Age, it made no sense. Besides for the completely unattributed Christie tribute, it showed only a very general and unapplied knowledge of some random trappings of the era/genre, not of the actual kinds of stories and plots that were a part of it- it was like Stevenson was name-dropping authors and reciting trivia rather than incorporating it into anything interesting. And the use in the construction of the mystery felt like Stevenson making things harder for himself than they needed to be. Without all of the cute clue-labeling and thought-revealing, the book would have been far more satisfying.