Publisher: Penguin (Trade Paperback – 30 September 2025)
Series: Erenest Cunningham – Book Four
Length: 355 pages
My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
The over-the-top investigations of Ernest Cunningham resume in the outstanding and highly entertaining Australian crime fiction novel, Everyone in this Bank is a Thief by Benjamin Stevenson.
For the last few years, the Australian crime fiction scene has been the playground of Benjamin Stevenson. A comedian and performer with his brother, Stevenson started writing back in 2018 when he debuted his first crime fiction novel Greenlight (also released as Trust Me When I Lie and She Lies in the Vines), which Stevenson expertly followed up a year later with the great sequel Either Side of Midnight. While these initial books were really good, for me Stevenson’s best work has been his Ernest Cunningham novels.
The Ernest Cunningham series follows the titular character, a crime fiction expert from a notorious family, who finds himself caught up in some real-life whodunit situations. The first book in the series, Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone (one of my favourite Australian novels of 2022), was particularly impressive, and it cleverly combined the author’s great sense of humour with a compelling mystery. Stevenson continued to impress the following year, with Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (one of my favourite books and pieces of Australian fiction of 2023) a worthy sequel that further parodied various crime fiction subgenres. Stevenson even released a short, but impactful, Christmas entry in the Ernest Cunningham series last year with Everyone this Christmas has a Secret, which saw a Christmas variety show get very bloody, and which ended up being one of my favourite pieces of Australian fiction in 2024. Due to how wildly entertaining these books were, I just had to get the fourth book in the series, Everyone in this Bank is a Thief, when it came out this year, and it was one of my most anticipated reads for the second half of 2025, especially with its fun title and awesome plot concept.
Ernest Cunningham, murder mystery expert and Australia’s least likely detective, has so far solved three murders, each in its own outrageous scenarios. But even he is unprepared to solve a case in the middle of a bank robbery.
Trapped in a small-town bank while trying to get a loan for their new detective agency, Ernest and his fiancé Juliette find themselves at the mercy of a masked armed bandit, who has locked down the bank and demanding access to the vault. The only problem, the bank’s chief of security who knows the code is missing, and Ernest was just in the process of being hired to find him.
Besieged by the police and with no chance of escape, Ernest is determined to get his fellow hostages out alive by discovering out the vault’s code. However, as he begins his enquiries, he quickly discovers that the armed man holding them hostage isn’t the only criminal he’s dealing with. There are many different things that can be stolen in this bank, and all the trapped hostages have their own plots in motion. However, only one person is there to steal a life, and when bodies start turning up, Ernest once again finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation.
With all the suspects trapped in the bank with him, Ernest works quickly to solve the murders before the police end the siege. All the people in the bank are suspicious, but is the killer the bank robber, the silent priest, the greedy film producer, the teen gaming prodigy, the dying teenage girl and her mother, or a member of bank’s staff? To find the truth, Ernest will have to uncover everyone’s secrets and work them into his established rules for a murder mystery. But can he solve the crime before the killer takes him out, or is this one crazy investigation that even Ernest Cunningham cannot survive?
Benjamin Stevenson once again deeply impresses as Everyone in this Bank is a Thief was a brilliant and highly addictive novel that perfectly combines over-the-top mystery with the author’s distinctive humour. Clever, wildly entertaining, and just a little silly, Everyone in this Bank is a Thief was so much fun to read, and it gets a full five-star rating from me.
What another brilliant and hilarious story. Everyone in this Bank is a Thief was such an entertaining read, and I loved how crazy and exciting Stevenson made it. Starting off with an interesting introductory note from the protagonist that sets the scene and foreshadows some of the events to come, you are quickly taken to the bank setting in small-town Australia, where Ernest and returning character Juliette are tasked with investigating the missing head of security, who has changed the code to the vault. Stevenson does an effective job of introducing the locked room scenario, as well as the various suspects in these opening chapters, before the bank is taken over by the masked armed robber. With everyone gathered as hostages and the bank surrounded by police, Ernest finds himself taking on the task of finding the combination to the vault to fulfil the robber’s unusual request of a single dollar from the bank’s vault. This initial investigation provides a lot of hints about events for the future, before the story takes an enticing turn when someone dies in a spectacularly unusual situation. This inspires Ernest to take on an unadvised secondary role in the case, which moves the story into an entertaining new direction.
The second half of the book is even more compelling, and you power through it fast as you can to get to the conclusion. It quickly becomes apparent that there are multiple murders associated with this case, in addition to the other simultaneous heists taking place throughout the bank, all of which Ernest needs to uncover to solve the entire case. The author selectively reveals some of these secondary crimes earlier in the plot, which allow the story to move forward, while also moving the suspicion away from some of the potential suspects. While Stevenson continues to work in even more details about the suspects and the circumstances of their heists, there is also a certain amount of personal drama added into the mix, especially once Juliette realises the lengths Ernest has gone to solve the case, with some excellent moments leading up to it. The interplay between the main plot and the author’s notes that hint at the future become even more entangled and urgent as the book continues, especially as the events of the two start to catch up, and Stevenson works in the usual concern about the protagonist’s survival a little earlier than usual. Everything leads up to the classic summation gathering, where all the remaining secrets are revealed in hilarious and over-the-top fashion. Featuring a big and deadly climax that all of Ernest’s investigations seem to require, the book ends on an entertaining note, with the series still having the potential to go forward.
I really enjoyed this new novel from Stevenson, which was an excellent continuation of the Ernest Cunningham series. Working well as either the fourth book in the series, or an excellent standalone novel, Everyone in this Bank is a Thief was a lot of fun, with the concept of a crime fiction expert using the tropes of the genre to identify the killer in a humorous situation still as effective as ever. Told in the form of a true-crime book by the protagonist as he recounts the events of the bank heist, the narrative features a classic closed circle of suspects as Ernest investigates several murders, including an actual locked-room mystery, as well as several adjacent thefts, all while trapped in the murder scene. The result is an over-the-top mess of an investigation, as the various big personalities trapped in the bank clash with Ernest’s unusual methods and style, much to the audience’s glee. While there is a lot of focus on the book’s humour, Stevenson also does a great job pulling together a complex mystery with a lot of compelling suspects. There are a lot of intricate details and clues loaded into the story, often hidden by the more comedic interactions, and all these elements are well used later in the book, whether in solving the murders or examining the various hidden motivations of the other characters. The eventual reveal of the killer also proves to be quite clever, and there is some fantastic build-up to the discovery, even if the methods the protagonist uses to uncover them, as well as the crimes itself, are a tad ridiculous.
As with the previous books in the series, Everyone in this Bank is a Thief is a great satirical take on classic crime fiction novels, with the author and the protagonist both keen to utilise and honour the well-known tropes of the genre. While Stevenson once again features a fun takedown of old-school detective fiction murder mysteries, he also takes his protagonist outside of his crime fiction wheelhouse with the murder taking place amid a heist. Forcing the protagonist to apply heist tropes alongside his established rules for classic murder mysteries results in a great hybrid case, with a lot of jokes and references about both subgenres of crime fiction. Stevenson naturally goes overboard with the heist elements, with several concurrent thefts happening in the bank, all of which could serve as a potential motive for murder. I loved the outrageous variety of thefts that were worked into the plot, especially as most weren’t typical fictional robberies, and it was quite impressive to see Stevenson work them into the novel’s larger murder mystery. The series’ usual pre-narrative hints of events and murders to come, with accompanying page numbers, were missing in this latest novel, instead replaced by the alternate focus on the protagonist’s plight, as he instead uses the introduction to reveal that he is trapped in a safe and slowly running out of air. The humour of this situation, as well as build-up of suspense to when Ernest gets locked in the safe, added some extra fun and drama to the plot, and it was an interesting twist on the usual Ernest Cunningham book. I really enjoyed how Stevenson continues to experiment and alter the initial story and writing concepts he introduced in Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone, and this book was a worthy addition to this series, especially with the new focus on heist fiction in addition to other comedic differences.
As with the previous books in the series, Everyone in this Bank is a Thief features a memorable and over-the-top cast of characters. This includes series protagonist Ernest Cunningham, a writer and crime fiction expert who has accidently found himself in the middle of several murder investigations. Attempting to continue his unlikely career as a professional detective, Ernest proves to be an intriguing and entertaining protagonist, especially with his cynical outlook on the world. Much of the book’s humour comes from Ernest’s entertaining observations of the people around him, and he has a unique way of solving crimes that mocks traditional murder mysteries in all the best ways. There is a compelling addictive element to Ernest’s need to solve crime in this latest novel, which often forces him to make some stupid decisions, and the author adds in some interesting and entertaining self-reflective moments that I quite enjoyed. There is also and quite entertaining look at Ernest’s notoriety and semi-fame in wider society, which plays into the story in several fun ways, including making him a potential target for murder. I loved how much Ernest has developed over the series, and this proved to be a great extra inclusion to his story.
The rest of the cast of Everyone in this Bank is a Thief is also quite impressive, with my favourite being Ernest’s patient fiancé, Juliette. A strong-willed, intelligent supporting character who has been Ernest’s love interest since the first book, Juliette often finds herself trapped in these elaborate murder investigations alongside her partner. Her latest outing in Everyone in this Bank is a Thief was particularly fun, as Stevenson used some interesting shenanigans to showcase Juliette’s feelings about Ernest’s antics, especially when he gets caught up in an investigation. The real brains and emotional heart of this novel, Juliette was extremely awesome, and I love how well she complements Ernest as the protagonist. The rest of the cast, the majority of whom are fellow hostages in the bank, also prove to be a ton of fun, especially as all of them are thieves in one way or another. While I’m going to limit my discussion about these supporting characters to avoid spoilers, I will say that Stevenson came up with an awesomely eclectic group of suspects, red herrings and rogues here, and uncovering their associated ploys and schemes made for some great reading.
Overall, Everyone in this Bank is a Thief was outstanding fourth entry in the Ernest Cunningham series, and I had such an epic time getting through it. Benjamin Stevenson has perfected his formula for highly entertaining murder mysteries, and the intricate blend of complex mystery, excellent humour and outrageous characters makes for quite an impressive read. One of the best Australian crime fiction novels of 2025, Everyone in this Bank is a Thief comes very highly recommended, and I cannot wait to see what Stevenson writes next.
The Unseen Library 