Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone in this Bank is a Thief (2025) is a mystery novel and the fourth installment in his Ernest Cunningham series. Like the series’s first book, the internationally bestselling Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, this novel blends classic mystery conventions with a humorous, metafictional style. The story begins when Ernest, an amateur detective who follows the rules of Golden Age detective fiction, is hired by a bank director to find his missing brother. The investigation is immediately complicated when a bank robber takes everyone hostage and demands entry to the vault. Isolated from the police, Ernest must solve the case from within the building. The novel explores themes including Theft as Regaining Something Lost, Moral Compromise for Justice, and Grief as a Motive for Crime. Stevenson is an award-winning Australian author and former stand-up comedian. His first book in the series won Australia’s Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel, and a television adaptation of Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone is in development at HBO.

This guide is based on the 2025 Mariner Books first US edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of addiction, graphic violence, death, child death, suicide, suicidal ideation, substance use, and mental illness.

Plot Summary

Ernest Cunningham, a self-described “passable detective” raised on Golden Age mysteries, begins narration of his fourth case from inside a refrigerator-sized safe with roughly 14 hours of air left. He has a notebook, a near-empty revolver, a magnet, a chemistry textbook, and a jar of holy water. He admits at the outset that, against the rules of “fair play” (an essential component of Golden Age detective fiction), he cannot name the killer because he has not yet solved the case. He is writing down what has occurred so far in an attempt to solve the mystery and hopefully escape the safe before he runs out of air. He sketches out the situation: 10 suspects, 10 heists, and a bank robbery that he has participated in himself.

The story begins earlier that day in Huxley, Australia, a country town blanketed by a once-a-decade migration of white butterflies. Ernest and his fiancée Juliette Henderson have driven seven hours to ask Winston Huxley, one of the owners of Huxley’s Bank, for a loan to fund a detective agency. In the newspaper, they see that Laurence Birch, an actor hired to play Ernest in a television adaptation of his detective work, has been hit by a delivery van in Byron Bay and taken off life support.

Inside Huxley’s Bank, Ernest and Juliette meet receptionist Michelle, who directs them upstairs to Winston’s office. After telling them that there is no way they will receive a loan to start the agency, Winston reveals why he really took the meeting: He wants Ernest, famous for his detective work now, to investigate the disappearance of his brother (and co-director of the bank) Edward. He has changed the vault code and vanished, and Winston wants Ernest to find him.

In the lobby of the bank, a hooded figure in a fencing mask enters. He fires a single shot into the ceiling, chains the front doors, and herds everyone upstairs. Remy Allard, the producer who was set to film the adaptation of Ernest’s work, has arrived at the bank and is swept up as a hostage alongside the others in the lobby: security guard Felix Gao, a silent priest named Father Gabriel who communicates by iPad, a teenage gamer named Eric, and an obviously ill girl, Cordelia Bright, accompanied by her grandmother Laverna.

The thief speaks through a voice-changer and demands a single dollar from the vault. Told the vault cannot be opened, the thief settles in to wait, confiscating their phones. He doesn’t, however, seem particularly concerned about controlling the hostages’ movements, and once he learns that Ernest is Ernest Cunningham, the famous detective, he allows Ernest to hunt for clues to the vault code.

Ernest searches Edward’s cluttered office for the code. Edward’s parrot Ditto repeats fragments of an overheard conversation: “You are dead. Dead! You can’t kill me. I am not a clue” (93). Ernest notes alphabet magnets on Edward’s safe, reading “HAPPY FATHER’S DAY, LOVE BEN!” (86), a Security Solutions invoice dated the day Edward disappeared, and a small gold trophy bar.

He goes downstairs to the atrium, where the door to the vault is located. The doors to the outside are chained shut, but there is a gap between the doors, and he sees an arm come through and wave at him. Tobias Cuthbert introduces himself as the local negotiator, divorce lawyer, and Eric’s father. He passes Ernest a radio.

Ernest then climbs to the roof, where he finds the thief without his mask. He introduces himself as Bryce. He paces the parapet, telling Ernest, “It’s done.” He is excited about his success, even though Ernest points out that they never got the vault open. He says it doesn’t matter, because he’s done what he came to do. Then his tone changes, and he implies that he killed a woman. He plans to walk out of the bank disguised as a hostage. He keeps complaining about the heat, and then, suddenly, bursts into flames in front of Ernest.

Shocked, Ernest hears a phone ringing and reaches into the bag of confiscated phones that Bryce had at his feet. The call is to Bryce’s phone, and Ernest hears a female voice saying, “We’re in” (147).

Ernest decides that, rather than signal the police, he will take over the robbery so he can investigate Bryce’s murder before the suspects scatter. He puts on Bryce’s boilersuit, mask, gloves, and boots, and hides the body under an air-conditioning vent. He goes downstairs and tells the other hostages that the thief is holding Milton, a bank teller who got out of the bank when the robber first locked it down. He also tells them that he is conferring with Ernest in Winston’s office and begins switching identities to move amongst them and discover the crime. He even lies repeatedly to Juliette about his identity.

When he catches Remy trying to escape, he locks him in the bathroom and extracts a confession. Remy admits that there is no television show about Ernest. He has been running an insurance fraud, pretending to get ready for filming while taking out a $25-million-dollar policy on Ernest (credited as the writer) on the theory that Ernest’s pattern of near-death situations would eventually pay out. Laurence’s death was incidental, not planned. In the present, writing from inside the safe, Ernest acknowledges that his drive to solve puzzles has overridden every relationship that matters to him.

Working through the suspects one by one, Ernest uncovers a chain of thefts by the various hostages. Michelle turns out to be a professional security consultant that Edward had hired to stress-test the bank. Her invoice number, 700345Y, reads in leetspeak as “TOO EASY,” which is the vault code (as part of her job, she changed it after she broke in).

When the vault opens, they find Edward inside, partially burned in a charred chair, his feet severed at the shins, his gold fillings melted on the floor. Ernest finally tells Juliette about his deception, and they arrange for her to be the next hostage released so that she can investigate on the outside. When they speak over the radio, she explains the “wick effect”: A body’s fat, drawn up through smoldering clothing, can sustain prolonged combustion, allowing a corpse to burn like a candle without any added accelerant. She also tells him that Bryce Fredericks has porphyria, a genetic condition causing extreme sensitivity to ultraviolet light, which he shares with his daughter Emma, who has a heart condition and needs a transplant.

Ernest then exposes Cordelia and Laverna’s fraud. Cordelia is not ill. She and Laverna have been using Emma Fredericks’s medical records to pose as a patient needing a transplant. A year earlier, they deliberately crashed their car to avoid the surgery they had obtained through deception, and neither Cordelia nor Emma got the donor heart. Cordelia is consumed by guilt; Laverna is not.

Father Gabriel, breaking a year-long vow of silence, admits that he has been running an illegal esports betting operation, laundering the proceeds through eBay listings of celebrity memorabilia. Edward had been his largest losing client.

Ernest also reveals that Felix has been stealing gold from the bank: He is slowly dissolving the bank lobby’s gold nugget using aqua regia disguised as a sports drink when he comes to work every day. He admits that he has been taking revenge for the murder of his great-great-grandfather Yang, who actually discovered the nugget, the foundation of the Huxleys’ fortune. Harold Huxley poisoned him with gold flakes brewed in a teapot that is also displayed in the bank as an artifact. Winston had stolen Yang’s ashes to suppress that information, as the ashes would still contain the gold that would prove the murder.

The truth behind Bryce’s robbery is that he didn’t come for money; he came for time. His daughter Emma was second on the transplant list, behind Cordelia. She lost her chance at a heart once before, and Bryce was determined that it wouldn’t happen again. When Laurence Birch died, Bryce recognized that Laurence’s heart would be a match for Emma. He took the bank hostage to keep Cordelia away from the hospital long enough for the heart to go to Emma, not knowing that Cordelia was faking her condition.

Ernest reveals that Bryce was killed to conceal a different crime: Edward’s murder. Edward had found a recorded gaming session showing that Eric Cuthbert had “swatted” Winston’s son Ben Huxley in order to beat him in an esports competition. Eric had wanted to impress a father who dismissed his esports career by winning against Ben. This deliberate false police call led officers to shoot and kill Ben in his own home—they heard gunfire from his game and thought they were facing a shooter. Edward confronted Tobias about it, and Tobias struck Edward. Edward, concussed, locked himself in the vault with the recording to protect it and lost consciousness. The pistachios in his pocket then self-heated and ignited him while he was unconscious.

When Ernest mentioned to Tobias earlier that Edward had been missing for two days, Tobias realized that Edward was dead inside the vault. Bryce hadn’t asked for much from the negotiator except sunscreen for his porphyria. Tobias used white phosphorus extracted from a flashbang grenade to lace the sunscreen, knowing that Bryce’s porphyria would force him to apply it while exposed to sunlight on the roof.

The closing chapters take place at Ernest’s staged funeral, to which he and Juliette have invited all the hostages. Ernest explains that Edward had used an antique wool lift to exchange his safe with Winston’s as a precaution. He had also tried to leave Winston a clue that he was in the safe by using the trucker code 10-11 (“on radio”) on his abacus.

Ernest relates that after he was pushed into that swapped safe, he shot himself in the stomach while trying to escape, then tipped the safe out the third-floor window and survived the fall. Juliette and a cooperating Father Gabriel kept him alive and arranged a closed-casket service attended only by the suspects.

Ernest sits up in the coffin and walks the assembled group through their crimes, drawing the killer out with the claim that Ditto the parrot is in the vestry. Tobias takes the bait, drags Eric toward the bell tower to try to escape and take his son with him. He is killed when his own gunfire severs the rope and a cast-iron bell crushes him. Eric chooses to face consequences for Ben’s death.

Afterward, Ernest tears up Winston’s hush-money cheque, donates his wedding budget to Emma Fredericks’s medical fund, and acknowledges that he writes these accounts partly to process grief and partly to confess. His last written words, when he believed he was dying, were not the solution to the case but a message to Juliette, borrowed from Arthur Conan Doyle’s last words to his wife: “You are wonderful” (313). Father Gabriel, released from his vow, agrees to marry Ernest and Juliette at no charge.