{"id":6014,"date":"2024-10-11T08:31:13","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T15:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6014"},"modified":"2024-10-11T08:31:13","modified_gmt":"2024-10-11T15:31:13","slug":"benjamin-stevenson-everyone-this-christmas-has-a-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/benjamin-stevenson-everyone-this-christmas-has-a-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"Benjamin Stevenson: Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ernest Cunningham #3<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This amuse-bouche of a Christmas read features intrepid detective Ernest Cunningham.\u00a0 In the first book, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, <\/em>murders piled up at a family reunion; in book two, Everyone on This Train is a Suspect,<\/em> Ernest is on a train trip through Australia featuring mystery authors, when \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 bodies pile up.\u00a0 In the Christmas version Ernest is summoned by his ex who is sitting in jail, covered in blood, accused of killing her partner.<\/p>\n

All of these books are clever in the Golden Age tradition, on steroids.\u00a0 They aren\u2019t so much tongue in cheek, as Stevenson obviously loves the genre, but they are pretty funny, and as Stevenson himself is a stand up comedian, that only seems right.\u00a0 He also adheres quite rigidly to the rules of detective fiction laid out by the Detection Club back in the 20\u2019s, and in this version, he has rules for Christmas mysteries as well.<\/p>\n

Ernest takes off without quite telling his fianc\u00e9e where he\u2019s going, arrives to find Erin a complete wreck, and begins to delve into the crime, at her request. Erin\u2019s partner was the head of a foundation that sponsored addicts through rehab and then tries, with much success, to give them a new life through theater.\u00a0 This particular theater is in the natural beauty spot of Katoomba, Australia, and the reason Ernest has given to his fianc\u00e9e is that he\u2019s seeing a headliner magician at the theatre who his uncle has booked for their wedding.\u00a0 Technically, true.<\/p>\n

Ernest slips right in backstage, invited by the dead man\u2019s business partner to see what he can discover, and everyone in the backstage world is pretty forthcoming.\u00a0 The book is structured like an advent calendar \u2013 each chapter and its clue are like one of the little doors.\u00a0 The clues are certainly there to solve the crime, but this is a very cleverly constructed book and while the clues may indeed be there, they are pretty tricky.<\/p>\n

In golden age style, the puzzle in the main thing, but Stevenson also has a gift for laying down characters on a page in a few brief strokes, and it\u2019s the characters that make the story stick (though the fiendishly clever solution might stick as well).\u00a0 It\u2019s Christmassy mostly in that it\u2019s set a few days before Christmas and the deadline of the 24th gives the story a ticking clock type structure.\u00a0 This was a really fun read, and even if you are good at figuring out endings, I challenge any reader to figure out just what happened here.\u00a0\u00a0— Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ernest Cunningham #3 This amuse-bouche of a Christmas read features intrepid detective Ernest Cunningham.\u00a0 In the first book, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, murders piled up at a family reunion; in book two, Everyone on This Train is a Suspect, Ernest is on a train trip through Australia featuring mystery authors, when \u2013 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1519,398,1521,1870,955,484,856],"class_list":["post-6014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-benjamin-stevenson","tag-christmas","tag-ernest-cunningham","tag-everyone-this-christmas-has-a-secret","tag-golden-age","tag-humor","tag-mariner-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6014"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6030,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014\/revisions\/6030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}