All of Us Murderers Summary: KJ Charles Gothic Mystery
TL;DR: Quick Briefing
Lackaday House stands behind twelve-foot walls on the bleak expanse of Dartmoor, its gates locked and its master waiting.
When Zebedee Wyckham accepts his cousin Wynn’s invitation, he expects an awkward family visit — not his estranged ex-lover serving as the household secretary, and not a fortune dangled as bait.
K. J. Charles sets All of Us Murderers in Edwardian England, where a faux-Gothic mansion built on slave-trade money becomes the stage for greed, staged hauntings, and old wounds.
The novel follows a family sealed inside by fog, inheritance, and one another.
- Setting: Lackaday House, an isolated Gothic mansion on Dartmoor, built a century earlier by a slave trader turned sensational novelist.
- The trap: Wynn Wyckham will leave everything to whichever male relative marries his young ward, Jessamine.
- The haunting: A cowled monk, blood on an altar stone, and a room full of spiders recreate scenes from the family’s own Gothic novels.
- The truth: The staff are the Wyckhams’ past victims, and Wynn is hunting his relatives to extend his own life.
- The core: A second-chance romance between two men who misunderstood each other for nine months.
Book Snapshot
- Genre & Subgenre: Historical Mystery / Gothic Suspense / LGBTQIA+ Romance (Edwardian Gothic Murder Mystery)
- Core Narrative Tropes: Isolated manor house, locked-room mystery, forced proximity, estranged lovers, tainted inheritance, staged hauntings, servant vengeance plot
- Tone & Atmosphere: Dark, claustrophobic, witty, melodramatic, suspenseful, romantic
- Primary Conflict: Zeb’s attempt to survive his family and escape Lackaday House while protecting Gideon and repairing their past
- Pacing Style: Fast-paced, with escalating set pieces and whodunit suspense
- Book Structure: 23 chapters, an epilogue, and an author’s note
- Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press (October 7, 2025)
- Pages: 352
- ISBN-10: 1464227527
- ISBN-13: 978-1464227523
All of Us Murderers Summary: The Full Story
Spoilers ahead.
Zebedee “Zeb” Wyckham is twenty-eight, scruffy, and works as a clerk while secretly writing bestselling children’s books as “Zinnia Waters”.
His wealthy cousin Wynn Wyckham has pressed him repeatedly to visit Lackaday House, and Zeb finally agrees.
On arrival he learns the gathering is larger than expected. His arrogant older brother Bram is there, along with Bram’s icy wife Elise, their decadent artist cousin Hawley, and a military cousin, Colonel Wyckham Dash.
Worse, Wynn’s confidential secretary is Gideon Grey — Zeb’s former supervisor and ex-lover. Nine months earlier, their relationship ended with Zeb publicly dismissed from his post at Cubitt’s.
At dinner, Wynn states his purpose. He intends to keep the estate and his £150,000 fortune intact by leaving all of it to whichever male relative marries his ward, Jessamine.
Zeb refuses outright. He will not marry a stranger for money. Hawley responds by threatening to expose Zeb’s homosexuality, while Bram begins scheming to control the inheritance himself.
Then the house turns hostile. A grey-cowled, faceless monk appears in the corridors. Slanderous red graffiti shows up on Hawley’s wall and vanishes before it can be examined.
Fresh blood pools on the altar stone in the estate’s stone circle folly. Zeb returns to his room to find it crawling with hundreds of live spiders and the word “SODOMITE” scrawled across the papered walls.
Terrified and arachnophobic, Zeb flees to Gideon’s room. There, the two finally talk through their breakup, including Zeb’s aversion to promises and Gideon’s misreading of his character.
Zeb’s father once forced Bram to promise to care for him, and Bram broke that promise while taking Zeb’s inheritance. Gideon admits his own rigidity cost them both. They reconcile and agree to face the danger together.
Zeb then notices something: the terrors mirror the plots of his grandfather Walter Wyckham’s Gothic novels. Wynn believes the family “Wyckham Curse” — that Walter traded his wives and descendants to Satan for long life.
Turning fifty himself, Wynn has calculated his relatives’ ages and intends to orchestrate their deaths so he can absorb their unlived years. Colonel Dash vanishes, and Wynn claims the man is bedridden with malaria.
Searching Dash’s room, Zeb finds shaving gear, a compass, and a revolver left behind — proof that Dash was quietly removed. Zeb also finds a locked tower room where Walter imprisoned his last wife for seven years until her death.
The household staff are revealed as Wynn’s allies and as victims of the family. Chauffeur Fenton is the father of Bram’s abandoned mistress Florence, who died pregnant, and Hawley assaulted maid Rachel and cook Anna.
Elise once prosecuted footman Alfred’s fiancée. “Jessamine”, meanwhile, is not a sheltered eighteen-year-old ward at all, but an adult actress hired as bait in Wynn’s trap.
A dense Dartmoor mist settles in, sealing the gates and trapping everyone inside. Elise threatens to expose Bram and Hawley, and shortly afterward she is pushed down the central stone staircase to her death.
The killing reenacts Lady Ravendark’s murder in Coldstone Abbey. Bram, broken by guilt over Florence, admits to the crime.
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Wynn locks Zeb in the library and turns Bram loose on Hawley with a poker. Rachel, moved by Zeb’s genuine kindness toward her, chooses to unlock a hidden passage instead.
Zeb and Gideon retrieve Zeb’s manuscript and run through the estate. They board the grocer’s delivery cart just as it passes through the iron gates, escaping Lackaday House.
At the coroner’s inquest, Wynn and his staff frame the dead. They testify that Bram murdered Elise, Hawley shot Bram, and Hawley jumped from the roof.
Zeb tries to expose the truth, but the coroner dismisses his account as absurd. Months later, the acetylene gas plant explodes and burns Lackaday House to the ground.
Wynn’s charred remains are recovered beside Colonel Dash’s body, hidden in a cellar well. “Jessamine” escapes to America with £15,000 in stolen jewels and cash.
By default, Zeb inherits the remaining Wyckham fortune. He places the entire £150,000 into a trust to be repatriated to the Caribbean plantations Walter Wyckham once enslaved, with Gideon as live-in manager.
The two men live together in London for over forty years. Zeb enjoys a celebrated career as the author “Zinnia Waters”.
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Characters in All of Us Murderers
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Zebedee “Zeb” Wyckham | The protagonist; a twenty-eight-year-old clerk and secret children’s author summoned to Lackaday House. |
| Gideon Grey | Wynn’s confidential secretary and Zeb’s former supervisor and ex-lover. |
| Wynn Wyckham | Master of Lackaday House, who offers his fortune to whichever relative marries his ward. |
| Bram Wyckham | Zeb’s older brother, an art critic who took Zeb’s inheritance and abandoned his mistress Florence. |
| Elise Wyckham | Bram’s wife, who had an affair with Hawley and is killed on the main staircase. |
| Hawley Wyckham | An artist and cousin who blackmails Zeb over his sexuality. |
| Colonel Wyckham Dash | A military cousin who disappears from his room early in the visit. |
| “Jessamine Wyckham” | Presented as Wynn’s eighteen-year-old ward; in fact an actress hired as bait. |
| Rachel | Housemaid at Lackaday House and a victim of Hawley’s assault. |
| Fenton | The chauffeur and father of Bram’s deceased mistress Florence. |
| Anna | The cook, a former artist’s model discarded by Hawley. |
| Alfred | A footman whose fiancée was prosecuted by Elise. |
| Walter Wyckham | The deceased grandfather, a Gothic novelist and slave trader who built Lackaday House. |
| Laura Wyckham | Wynn’s late sister, who died before reaching fifty. |
Who Is All of Us Murderers For?
This novel suits readers of Edwardian and early twentieth-century historical mysteries who prefer a closed-circle setting.
The action stays almost entirely inside Lackaday House and its grounds, with a locked gate and an impassable mist limiting movement.
Readers of LGBTQ+ romance will find a central second-chance relationship told from Zeb’s perspective, with reconciliation taking place well before the final escape. The romance runs alongside, rather than instead of, the mystery plot.
Fans of Gothic atmosphere should expect ghostly apparitions, hidden passages, a family curse, and set pieces borrowed from nineteenth-century sensation fiction. Those scenes are staged and explained rather than supernatural.
The pacing builds through escalating incidents rather than a slow burn. The narrative alternates between dark suspense and dry, sharp dialogue, and the violence includes assault, blackmail, and murder described on the page.
Books Like All of Us Murderers
The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by K. J. Charles — Shares the author’s blend of historical LGBTQ+ romance, family secrets, and suspense-driven plotting.
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton — A claustrophobic British estate mystery built on eccentric suspects and hidden motives.
Crimson Peak (film/novelization) — Matches the isolated sinister mansion, secret passages, and dark family legacy.
Knives Out (film) — A wealthy patriarch, a dysfunctional family competing over an inheritance, and darkly comic turns.
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe — A foundational Gothic novel featuring a remote castle, an imprisoned heroine, and staged terrors.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier — A grand house whose history and buried secrets dominate the people living inside it.
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters — Victorian Gothic suspense with concealed identities, manipulation, and a central same-sex romance.
