Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

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Aleesha Paz.

At last this one’s yours.

Though they always have been, and always will be.

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once.

I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth, and when I was faced with writing this down, difficult as it is with one hand, I realised that telling the truth was the only way to do it. It sounds obvious, but modern mystery novels forget that sometimes. They’ve become more about the tricks the author can deploy: what’s up their sleeve instead of what’s in their hand. Honesty is what sets apart what we call ‘Golden Age’ mysteries: the Christies, the Chestertons. I know this because I write books about how to write books. There are rules, is the thing. A bloke named Ronald Knox was part of the gang and wrote down a set once, though he called them his ‘Commandments’. They’re in the first part of this book in the epigraph that everyone always skips but, trust me, it’s worth going back to. Actually, you should dog-ear it. I won’t bore you with the details here but it boils down to this: the Golden Rule of the Golden Age is play fair.

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