Everyone in This Bank is a Thief is the latest in Benjamin Stevenson's list of titles. In each of his tongue in cheek mystery novels, his amateur detective , Ernest Cunningham is always, through a series of mistakes and missteps, finds the answer to the crime, solving the mystery.
Ernest's special power is that he promises the reader that he is sharing the facts of the mystery without leaving out key pieces, not bringing in any clues at the end. He tries to suggest that the reader has as much information as Ernest has and could solve the murder just as the ending is being presented.
The books in the series are starting to become a little repetitive. The theme is clever but each book though very different from each other, are becoming in general very similar.
Interestingly the entire book is told as Ernest is writing the story after everything has occurred. He is now locked in the vault, thinking it is the end of his life, and he leaving the story for others to find when they finally open the vault.
As he explains the beginning of the story, time he walks into a bank with his fiancée looking for a bank loan to start a private detective agency. Then there is a bank robbery in progress and Ernest and his fiancée are taken hostage along with eight others. Now Ernest is charged with trying to find out what happened to the bank manager's brother who is missing.
The bank vault is locked and the combination to the lock is missing. As the plot progresses, Ernest tries to figure out the combination and is also searching for the missing brother. He also is trying to figure out the mindset of the bank robber.
Bringing all these various plot points are, in the end, brought together to tie the story up wrapping up the murder, robbery and missing brother into a neat package.
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