In the first in a series, Benjamin Stevenson show that
families have secrets worth killing for:
Ernest Cunningham has not been welcomed by his family in
many years, but with a family reunion set to occur he has been given a pardon
to attend. Ern knows that this will be one reunion to remember as someone
decided that it needed to be at a ski resort (he could kill someone for that),
and well everyone in Ern's family has killed someone so not the best idea to
bring them all together, especially when someone is hellbent on bringing up the
past and some of those deaths.
This was such a clever book (and you can tell that Ern knows
how clever he is) and I loved that it had more of the classic feel of a who-don
it. While the title may imply that there is death happening everywhere in the
book, they do not happen all at once, or even the main timeline of when the
book occurs. This kind of muddies the waters a bit (but in a good way) as you
try to puzzle out who has the most motivation for murder in the present time as
they have all killed someone at one point or another. I was able to figure one
of the twists before the end but not the Main twist that was very well done.
In order to enjoy this book you have to like that the
narrator of the story is going to be talking directly to the reader. Stevenson
uses this to give the readers some additional hints throughout the book as to
who the murderer is as well as to recite little tidbits that he gave at the
beginning of the book. I have not read too many books that use this to engage
the reader, but I liked it in this book and thought that it worked well with
the story.
You will also need to keep all the characters straight in
this book as there are quite a few and well they all have some skeletons in their
closets that they would not only like to forget but not let you know about as
well. I will point out that the title says killed and not murdered.
Personally think this book was worth the hype a few years
ago and really enjoyed the way that Stevenson decided to tell this murder
mystery. I'll be checking out the other books in this series to see if they can
hold up to this one.
Enjoy!!!
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