☠️ Great Mystery and Amusing Short Stories🥠

 

    I like a clever, amusing, dark mystery. Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson is a practically perfect mystery. At the beginning, the narrator, Ernest Cunningham, who writes ebooks on how to write mysteries, says he will abide by Ronald Knox's famous 10 Rules of Mystery Writing:

1. The Criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has allowed to follow. 
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end. 
5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.
8. The detective must not light on any clues that are not instantly produced for the reader's inspection.
9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly below that of the average reader. 
10. Twin brother, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been dully prepared for them.

    These rules are from the 1930s, and Ernest has updated them, replacing racist #5 with something else. Ernest hilariously refers to the rules explaining when someone is not guilty as the mystery unfolds. I enjoyed the ride he took me on, and I figured out the killer but didn't know why he did it. My favorite rule is #9. 

    My DH, who also likes murder mysteries, found this one too dark at first.

    "But it's funny," I protested. 

    That makes all the deaths okay, right?

    Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone is written by an Australian author and takes place in Australia. I listened to the audiobook read by an Australian, so it was like being read to by Bluey's father, Bandit. Win!

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amusing, insightful, quick bites

    Alexander McCall Smith's book Tiny Tales is like eating delightful little canapés. The stories are quick, humorous, and usually have a little zing. My favorites are several stories about Pope Ron, the first Australian pope. Smith swims in some deep waters, talking about God and the nature of evil and how your native childhood country owns parts of your heart. By the end of the book, I'd been encouraged to look for the good in those around me and not take myself too seriously. The short stories are like fortune cookies: sweet but with a message.

Here is another review of Alexander McCall Smith's book The Number One Ladies Detective Agency: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=McCall+

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