Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

In interviews, author Benjamin Stevenson explains his concept for the book as an update to traditional mystery novels such as those by Agatha Christie (Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Crooked House) and Arthur Conan Doyle (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet, The Hound of the Baskervilles), noting that the genre is rooted in certain “rules” that allow the reader to be able to solve the mystery along with the book’s detective (Brewer, Robert Lee. “Benjamin Stevenson: On Combining Humor With Mystery.” Writer’s Digest, 18 Jan. 2023). These rules were devised by mystery writer Ronald Knox in 1929. By adhering to these rules, the writer can create a suspenseful tale that challenges the reader by keeping them guessing as to the correct solution but also makes the solution a logical and viable one. Stevenson specifically represents the novels of Agatha Christie, who is known for centering the conflict amid a web of complex family relations in which many characters have a motive for committing the crime. Stevenson utilizes this trope, but he modernizes it and then further complicates it by devising a problematic backstory for each family member in which each has already “killed someone” and thus could potentially be the novel’s culprit. The setting is often important in Christie’s mysteries, too, as the characters are drawn together in an exotic location (such as Death on the Nile or Evil Under the Sun) or confined or trapped at the location while the mystery unfolds (such as And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express, and A Murder Is Announced). Stevenson also utilizes this convention by setting the novel at a remote ski resort and then trapping the guests there with a snowstorm.

The uniqueness in Stevenson’s approach to the mystery novel extends to his use of the tropes of metafiction. Metafiction is a literary convention in which the “narrator and characters are aware that they are part of a work of fiction” (“Metafiction Guide: Understanding Metafiction in Literature.” MasterClass, 7 June 2021). The technique can be used to critique or otherwise make fun of literature itself, but it can also be a means of examining the world in a way that brings layers of complexity to the text. While not a completely new technique, metafiction gained popularity in the postmodern era, when a push to produce “art about art” (or “art about the process of making art”) came into fashion in the post-World War II era.

Techniques of metafiction can be used in other narrative forms, such as film and television or stage drama and even video games (“Metafiction Guide”). Its primary characteristics include the “breaking of the fourth wall,” or direct address of the reader by the narrator (a term borrowed from drama); self-reflection by the narrator, or drawing the reader’s attention away from the plot to the inner life or struggles of the narrator; and experimentation, or departing from the usual conventions of fiction. Stevenson employs all three tropes in the novel. Indeed, Ernie’s references to the rules of mystery novels is a clear use of breaking the fourth wall. Likewise, Ernie often muses about his role as a narrator, calling the reader’s attention to other literary tropes, such as that of the unreliable narrator. In blending elements of metafiction with a modernized mystery novel, Stevenson experiments with the ways such tropes can be bent and reformed to create a unique story.