Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone Book Summary
If you’re looking for a compelling crime novel with some dark humor, check out Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson. This modern murder mystery is one of the best I’ve read in a long time in the mystery genre. And it’s one of the best uses of breaking the fourth wall while still keeping the suspense right from the opening pages.
This is a summary of the book to read before reading my full book review to remind you of the main points of the book. If you haven’t finished the entire book, I highly recommend you do to get the full effect of the humor, great story telling, and intrigue in this mystery book.
My brother
Chapter 1
Ernest Cunningham early morning when his brother Michael pulls up and says he hit someone with his car. Still in shock, Ernie gets in the car and notices a duffel bag of cash on the floor while Michael drives them to a forest. They don’t go to the police Because of their family reputation, so they start digging a hole in the forest.
Ernie thinks he sees the body twitch, so Michael tells him to wait in the car. When Michael comes back to the car, he says the man just stop breathing before he buried him. Michael also says the man had already been shot when Michael hit him.
My Step-Sister
Chapters 2-3
Ernie shows up to the mandatory Cunningham family reunion, organized by his aunt Katherine, at Sky Lodge Mountain Resort, a mountain ski lodge, and the only one happy to see him is Ernie’s stepsister Sofia. Katherine’s husband, Andy, Ernie, stepfather Marcello, and Ernie’s sister-in-law Lucy reluctantly say hi, but his mother Audrey ignores him completely.
Sofia secretly gives Ernie a bingo card she made of funny things that may happen with the family over the weekend. Marcelo, a lawyer, jokes that he can’t walk outside in the snow because his should is still recovering from the replacement surgery Sofia did. Katherine insists everyone has to participate in the family weekend, and her husband Andy supports her no matter what she says.
Chapters 4-5
Ernie remembers the last time they were all together was at Michael’s trial when Ernie testified against him. And then thinks about how Michael will be joining the reunion when he gets released from prison tomorrow, but nobody seemed to know that, not only did Ernie testify, but he was the one who called the police after getting back home. Ernie returns to his room when Marcelo calls him to say his mother’s not feeling well, so they have to cancel dinner.
Sofia shows up asking about the money which is the money Ernie has from the night Michael killed the man. No one ever mentioned it and it was never mentioned in the trial, so Ernie kept it and only mentioned it to Sofia because he’s going to give it back to Michael.
While they’re talking Sofia asks to borrow fifty grand of it, and Ernie thinks she’s in trouble. She changes the subject when the phone rings and the caller ID says it’s from Sofias room right before it stops ringing. After she leaves, Ernie calls her room, and Sofia answers to say she made it back safe.
Chapters 6-7
Ernie wakes up to see a crowd and police lights outside, and goes to see a body with a blackened face lying in the snow on the golf course. The flustered police officer asks Sofia, a doctor, to pronounce him dead, and then Sofia, Andy, and Ernie help the police officer carry the body into a nearby maintenance shed because a big snowstorm is starting soon. Officer Crawford seems to think the man has frostbite from being caught outside, but Sofia mentions it’s a murder.
When Office Crawford leaves them to question others, Sofia tells them that the body had ash all over his face not frostbite. And there was a bleeding wound around his neck.
Chapters 8-9
Then, the family tries to have breakfast together when Marcelo and Audrey tell everyone they’re staying for the reunion. It turns into a fight when Sofia suggests it was the Black Tongue, but Katherine makes fun of her by reminding everyone her license is suspended. After Sofia storms off, Ernie finds out Sofia is being sued by someone’s family who died on her operating table, and Marcelo won’t defend her.
My Father
Chapters 10-11
When Ernie was six, Ernie’s father died when he was trying to rob a petrol station, and shot at the police officers responding to the alarm. He killed the policeman, but was killed by another officer. Since then, police had hated the Cunningham family, and the family had hated police.
Ernie goes up to the roof of Sky Lodge to try and get cellphone service where he runs into Lucy who’s nervous about seeing Michael. She tells him that she already looked up the Black Tongue which is a possible serial killer that has suffocated three people in different cities, and says she heard that all the guests at the resort are accounted for. Lucy also says she hates Ernie for what he did but also knows that Michael would have ended up in prison either way.
Chapters 12-13
Michael looks younger and healthier, and to Ernie, appears humble when Michael asks to talk to him. Everyone finds out that Michael divorced Lucy from prison, and she’s here this weekend as the only way to get him back.
Erin, Ernie’s wife who’s separated from him, gets out of the other car door as she’s now together with Michael. Ernie knows that Erin connected with Michael while he was in prison, and this is their first weekend in person together.
Marcelo and Audrey tell Michael about the dead man, and tell him the family can leave if the police presence is too much for him. Katherine and Lucy try to convince him to stay when a police officer comes over to arrest him.
Chapters 14-15
When everyone tries to stop the cop, Marcelo tries to threaten him because Michael just got out of prison, but Michael admits he got out yesterday afternoon instead of this morning. Michael and Erin won’t say where he was, so the cop leads him away into the lodge. Michael insists that Marcelo is not his lawyer, but tells the cop that Ernie is his lawyer.
Ernie decides to dig around the murder, so he confronts his mother who just yells at him for Michael. She insinuates that Michael had a good reason for doing what he did. To calm them both down, Marcel says he’ll look into the black tongue killer to appease Ernie.
My Mother
Chapters 16-17
Waiting at the snowstorm in the bar, Ernie ask Sofia about the lawsuit and if someone was in her chalet last night. Ignoring the second question, Sofia tells him she did nothing wrong, but the family is well connected to the hospital administration so it’s political. An intern also saw her drinking wine at a restaurant/bar the night before, and it came up in the case.
When Juliette the lodge owner comes to summon Ernie for Officer Crawford, Sofia tells him to ask Michael about the moving van him and Erin drove up because she doesn’t believe the story about needing to move his furniture. Thinking he’s a real lawyer, Juliette takes him to her office to show him the surveillance photos, taken out front of the lodge every three minutes. All they discover is that Marcelo left around seven, after canceling dinner, and return six hours later, but anyone can see the photos live on the website of the lodge.
Chapters 18-19
When Ernie goes to meet Crawford, Crawford knows about their family history and that Ernie testified against Michael, so he’s surprised Michael is asking for Ernie. Inside the room Michael is waiting in, Ernie thinks Michael is going to attack him, but suddenly Michael hugs Ernie while thanking him for doing the right thing in court. Michael admits that the cost of taking a life was not worth it, even though the man he killed, Alan Holton, stole that money from them.
Alan Holton was a former cop, with a bad history and fall from grace, when Michael killed him. Michael told Ern they’d come across him once when he rudely admitting to shooting their dad in front of their mother at the cops funeral they all attended. And the judge only gave Michael three years in prison, so that Marcelo wouldn’t bring up Alan‘s history as a dirty cop.
Chapters 20-21
Michael tells Ernie that Alan admitted to shooting their father’s death in the clearing causing Michael to kill him, but Michael later learned that Alan was a dirty cop that their dad was going to turn in. Their dad was in a group of criminals, the Sabers, but decided to be an informant for the police so he could get out. Alan found out and came after him.
Years later and in need of money, Alan reached out to Michael with information worth selling about their dad and a murder, so Michael brought him the money. As a struggle ensued over not having enough money, Alan’s gun went off, shooting him in the hip, and as Michael was trying to get out of there, he hit Alan with his car. Ernie is not sure if he believes the whole story, but when he asks Michael about the names of the previous Black Tongue victims, Michael says he got a letter in prison from one of those names asking him for information.
Then, seeing Ernie doesn’t really believe him, Michael gives him the keys to the van to check the back. On Ernie’s way out, Michael finds the bingo card Ernie dropped, and Ernie sees Michael writing something after putting in contacts. Ernie also thinks about that a few months after their father died, their mother forgot all three of them in their car seats in the car on a summer day, and their younger brother Jeremy died.
My Stepfather
Chapters 22-23
On the way to the truck, Sofia runs into Ernie and drags him outside into the storm because she saw somebody going to the maintenance shed. When they get to the shed, the lock is taken off and they find Erin inside. Erin admits she wants to figure out what happened to clear Michael’s name, and Ernie believes her.
Ernie, Erin, and Sofia notice the corpse has a wound around his neck in addition to the ash covering his face. Sofia says black tongue killer encloses people and fill the air with ash to suffocate them from breathing too much in. She thinks this man had a bag full of ash zip tied over his face, and his death is the killer announcing to the family that he’s here.
Chapters 24-25
With Erin waiting outside the van for him, Ernie finally makes it to the van in storm to find a coffin in the back that he recognizes as the coffin of the officer that his dad killed. When he opens the coffin, there’s also the skeleton of a young person next to the adult skeleton. Then, the van starts rolling, and Erin is there yelling that the brake is off as well as brake fluid on the ground next to the van.
The van starts rolling down the hill towards the frozen lake, and Ernie’s hand gets smashed between the coffin and the wall pinning him in. Ernie ties one of the moving straps around his waist as the van rolls onto the lake and falls engine first through the ice. As it’s sinking, Ernie throws the strap tied around his waist out the back of the truck onto the ice, but passes out in the cold water.
Chapters 26-27
When Ernie wakes up, Marcelo is there and tells him how he met his dad and helped him make a deal to turn in the dirty cops by becoming a police informant. Marcelo tells him things went wrong when a young girl was kidnapped and held for ransom by the Sabers, but disappeared because the parents didn’t pay the ransom money. Ernie realizes Alan helped bury the girl in the coffin, and was going to sell out the murderer to Michael because it derailed Alan’s career.
Then, Marcelo tells Ernie that the detective/Handler for his dad was a victim of the Black Tongue, so they both agree the murders has something to do with their family. Ernie finds out that Erin saved him from the lake, and hugs her when she comes in. Together, Ernie and Aaron go to the room Michael’s in to talk about the coffin, but the air is full of ash.
My Aunt
Chapters 28-29
Sofia and Crawford come into the bar where the entire family is waiting to explain that someone tied up Michael and filled the sealed room with ash while Crawford was gone helping with the van incident. Everyone starts blaming each other when Sofia shows a picture of the first victim to illustrate, and Lucy leaves the room she’s so upset. Juliette comes to say two buses with snow tires have come to pick up the rest of the guests, but the family decides they’re all staying to find out the truth.
Years ago, Katherine was drunk driving when she crashed killing her best friend in the passenger seat, and now has prescription pain meds for her leg injury. Katherine gives Ernie some of the pain meds for his wrist before leaving. Then, Erin asks to stay the night on the couch in Ernie’s chalet because she doesn’t want to be alone.
My Wife
Chapters 30-31
When they can’t sleep in the chalet, Erin admits that her relationship with Michael started before everything with Alan. Erin admits to purposely taking birth control while they were supposed to be trying for a baby because her mom died giving birth to her. Then, Erin’s abusive father blamed her for the death everyday of her childhood, so she was scared of having a baby or any kids.
Erin also admits that Michael never told her anything about the coffin, but she did take a jewelers eyepiece from Michael’s pocket earlier that morning. Ernie recognizes it from being in Michael’s car the morning of Alan’s murder.
Chapter 32
The next morning, Ernie breaks into Marcelo’s car and steals his GPS after seeing a window on Katherine’s car was broken from the storm yesterday. On the GPS, Ernie discovers that Marcelo drove to the ski resort on the other side of the valley and must have stayed for four hours. Then, Ernie and Erin walk up to the lodge to find the group looking for Lucy who has disappeared.
My Sister In Law
Chapters 33-34
Under the pretense of looking for Lucy, Ernie accompanies Juliette across the valley to the other ski lodge in case Lucy wandered outside. At the ski lodge, the owner mentions the McAuley couple which Ernie recognizes as the parents of the girl who was kidnapped and asked to meet them. The couple tells Ernie that they were meeting Michael who had photographs, and Ernie realizes why Michael brought the coffin up the mountain.
Ernie told him what happened, and the father says they’ll pay him the money they were gonna give Michael and pay divers to retrieve the coffin. They were the ones who gave Michael the money for the photos three years ago also when Michael was acting as the middle man between the couple and Alan. Ernie asks if they’ve seen his stepfather who was here the other night, but they say Audrey visited them instead.
Chapters 35-37
When Ernie gets back to the lodge, they have found Lucy’s body in the snow, and everyone thinks she jumped off the roof thinking it was her fault Michael died. Lucy was the one who suggested he stay in that room.
Ernie confronted his mother about the couple, and she admits the Sabers took Jeremy for the photographs the day they were locked in the car. She really did forget them in the car, but she wasn’t the one who got them out. However Audrey never found the photographs that her husband supposedly had of the girl’s kidnapping and murder.
As they’re getting ready to leave the lodge, Ernie summons the family, Juliette, and Crawford to the library because he’s figured out the identity of the killer.
My Step Father
Chapters 38
After the family gathers, Ernie explains that Marcelo cut the brakes for the van, so whatever was in the back wouldn’t get anyone else killed. He was trying to protect the rest of them after it caused so much trouble for the family, but didn’t mean for Ernie to fall in the lake.
Then, Ernie explains Katherine picked this secluded location to help Sofia detox because Sofia addicted to pain meds. Also Katherine broke into Sofia’s chalet to get the pills and accidentally called Ernie instead of Andy. And to help fund her addiction, Sofia stole her dad’s Rolex while she did his shoulder surgery.
The Rolex was from Ernie and Michael’s dad that Marcelo would give them when Audrey died, and it was left to Jeremy in his will. Sofia pawned it for money for pain meds, and it made its way to Alan’s pawnshop who noticed the microdot in it. Their father had photos of the murder of the kidnapped girl he made into a microdot which Ernie finally put together after hearing details from the day he was shot.
Lastly, when Sofia showed the photo after Michael’s death, Lucy recognized the photo of the first victim as the cop who gave her a speeding ticket on the way up. Then the killer followed her to the roof, but she jumped rather than being killed by him. Crawford is not a real police officer, but is their brother Jeremy.
My Brother
Chapter 39
Jeremy attacked the policeman in his car on the road, drove him up, killed him and took his uniform. He also never called backup. Over three years ago, Alan reached out to him about buying the photos and that’s how Jeremy found out he’s adopted. Alan was the one who took Jeremy for the Sabers but eventually just let him go onto the streets instead of killing him all while keeping tabs on him.
Jeremy sent a letter to Michael in prison, but Michael thought it was fake. Then, Jeremy reached out to Lucy who invited him for the weekend to reunite him with Michael thinking it would win Michael back for her.
Jeremy admits he came because he thought Michael would be like him after hearing the news of Michael killing Alan. Then, he admits he doesn’t remember any of his childhood or the two years he spent with the Sabers and on the streets. Eventually he was adopted but had a bad history while all kinds of behavior problems growing up. Eventually, he killed his adoptive parents for keeping the truth from him, and then the detective/handler when he went to her for more information about his family.
My uncle
Chapter 40
Suddenly, Jeremy takes the fire poker and spreads ashes from the fireplace around the library. Everyone runs from the fire, but Katherine tries to stop Jeremy for running away. Jeremy start choking Katherine, but Andy hit him with the poker, knocking him out.
Me
Chapter 41
As the family members watch, the lodge burn down, they see Jeremy stumble out into the snow, so Ernie goes over to him. Flying in the snow and bleeding out, Jeremy tells Ernie he killed Michael because Michael was not like him and was actually horrified to hear what Jeremy had done.
Jeremy admits to feeling like he can’t breathe when he gets mad. Ernie puts together that Jeremy‘s been suffocating people because that’s how he felt in the hot car. When Ernie walks back to his family, he tells him Jeremy just stopped breathing, and uses the same line Michael did after he killed Alan.
Epilogue
The family collectively decides to give the money to Lucy’s family and use it for her funeral while splitting the rest. Ernie officially divorced Erin and is dating Juliette. Sofia was cleared of all wrong doing.
A few months later, as Ernie is cleaning out his house and finds his suitcase from the family reunion, he finds the bingo paper from Michael in his coat pocket. The paper has a dot on it, and Ernie uses a magnifying glass to see the photos. The photo show men taking the body of the girl from her house while her father looks on.
Read the Full Book Review
Now that you’re reminded of the main points of the book, check out the full book review now. Because of the success of the this first novel, there’s more mystery novels in the series you can read if you liked Stevenson’s writing. I’m working on the second novel now, but you can find other recommendations for similar mystery authors in the book review.
