My Family and Other Suspects by Kate Emery

Title: My Family and Other Suspects

Author: Kate Emery

Genre: Crime

Publisher: Allen and Unwin

Published: 1^st October 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 336

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: Holly Jackson meets Agatha Christie in this cosy modern-day YA murder mystery where your closest family are your prime suspects.

Ruth is not thrilled to be spending the weekend at the family farm visiting the ancient GG, her coolly distant step-grandmother. With no internet or phone coverage, Ruth occupies herself by re-reading old Agatha Christie novels, eavesdropping on the adults, and definitely not daydreaming about her sort-of-cousin Dylan.

But when GG dies under suspicious circumstances, Ruth’s dull weekend turns into an enforced-family-holiday-slash-possible-murder-investigation – and she’s not about to let the police get in the way of her chance to solve a real-life murder mystery. With Dylan as the Watson to her Holmes, Ruth soon discovers that plenty of people had reasons to be rid of GG, and her list of suspects grows to comprise everyone in the house. Including, in the interests of fairness, herself.

~*~

Fourteen-year-old Ruth and her father are staying for a family weekend with her step-grandmother, GG. It’s the last thing she wants, especially with a family as complicated as hers, and with a step-grandmother as cool and aloof as GG. Ruth just wants to get through the weekend by re-reading Agatha Christie novels, listening in on the adults, and trying to not daydream about sort-of-cousin, Dylan.

But then, GG dies. And it is under suspicious circumstances. Everyone, it seems, had a motive or were somewhere unknown on the night of the murder. Phones go missing. People disappear and then reappear. Neighbours pop in and out. And there’s no reception as clues pop up and put various members of the family in and out of the picture. Even Ruth and Dylan, the intrepid teen detectives driven to investigate using what they know from Enola Holmes, Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, and all manner of mystery and crime shows that they have watched. Of course, things are a lot more complicated, and everyone has their own secrets in this novel – whether they have anything to do with GG’s death or not is another story. Kate Emery’s new novel is a bit like a closed room mystery, but with a twist. Everyone can drive around the farming town, but they’re being kept there during the investigation.

Whilst this is set in contemporary times, it is peppered with references to older crime shows and books, as well as newer ones like the Enola Holmes series, true crime podcasts and other movies that have had a significant impact on readers of this book. It balances the modern world and its technology, but allows Ruth and Dylan to become ‘old school’ investigators by taking away phones and phone reception. It still references modern technology to remind readers of when it is set. The crime in this novel happens off the page, like many cosy crime novels. The lack of violence suits the genre and the way the story is told, whilst exploring the various motivations for the murder. It revolves around a family whose dynamics aren’t quite what we expect and their responses to a murder and death in the family.

Family is complicated, as we see in My Family and Other Suspects, particularly when murder is involved. It gets messy, as Ruth tells the reader at various points throughout the novel. She talks to them, breaking the fourth wall. It invites the reader to become part of the story and to try and solve the case with our twenty-first century, Australian teenage Holmes and Watson. As with many crime novels, there will always be familiar tropes within them, but it comes down to how the author uses them. Technology and its impact on crime are inescapable in modern crime stories – we see it all the time in crime dramas, and it feels like it is a constant battle as a reader and writer to work out how to make it work. How to use the technology, but write the story in a way that the detectives, police, or whomever is investigating doesn’t rely on it too much. I felt that this was why what Kate Emery did worked – it allowed the characters to take time to solve the crime, for red herrings to be thrown in, and for things to take their time. Secrets were at the heart of this novel, that was filled with characters who were suspicious, or appeared at suspicious times, or behaved suspiciously.

This is a novel where anything is possible. Anyone could be the killer, and the subplots start to complicate things – especially Rob, who seems to show up out of the blue and claims to be GG’s neighbour. It’s the kind of novel with lots of threads and clues that needs to be read carefully to make sure you try not to miss anything. Everything is important, and yet anything could be just as unimportant. But nothing within this novel is a coincidence. It’s a novel that any reader aged fourteen and over can sink their teeth into and enjoy an unplugged world of crime solving. One thing I love about this, and some other newer crime novels is how the characters negotiate solving the crime at hand without technology. Due to our reliance on technology, I assume this will affect things. The ingenuity is in how the characters manage without technology, and it was done really well in this novel.

It’s a fun novel where the reader can try and solve the crime along with the characters. As a reader, I loved all the references to crime novels and shows, and how as viewers and readers, these things can shape what we know about crime. It had a genuine and unique voice that has something new to offer, whilst also getting into the mind of teens today. I think many readers will find something they can relate to in this novel and will hopefully appreciate how the references work and what they are.  Everything in this novel was carefully planned and used to create tension and a mystery that kept me reading until the last page.