Books like this generally tease out the backstory of an ensemble of reprobates, lock them in a singular location and then present a body that can be linked to parts of each player’s backstory as possible motive. I’ll try that.

The backstory: Three years ago, my brother Michael arrived on my doorstep, with a man named Alan Holton in the back seat of his car. Alan was dead, then he wasn’t, then he was again. Even though I knew it would effectively banish me from the family – mistrustful as we are of police after my father was killed robbing a petrol station – I sided with the law and turned my brother in.

The location: We’d all met up at the Sky Lodge Mountain Retreat! to welcome Michael back from prison. It’s Australia’s highest drive-in accommodation. There’s a storm coming, because of course there is. But please don’t think it so clichéd that we’re trapped there, because we’re not: we’re just stingy and indecisive. Although, I guess we are a bit stuck there now, seeing as Michael’s been locked in the Drying Room and we can’t just leave him behind – but that’s more the focus of the next couple of chapters and this is supposed to be a recap.

The ensemble: There’s my mother, Audrey, who blames me for the fragmented state our family is currently in; Marcelo, my stepfather, partner in esteemed legal firm Garcia & Broadbridge, who wears a university tuition on his wrist and represented Michael in his murder trial but won’t touch Sofia’s negligence case; Sofia, Marcelo’s daughter and my stepsister, who needs at least fifty grand for something, perhaps to do with a malpractice suit that may cost her her medical licence, is a surgeon who, among other achievements, handled Marcelo’s shoulder reconstruction; Katherine, my hyper-organised teetotaller aunt, whose idea the whole weekend was in the first place; Andy, Katherine’s husband, who wears his wedding ring like some men wear Purple Hearts; Lucy, Michael’s ex-wife, who stuck by him during the trial but whom he divorced while he was in prison because he had formed a special connection with . . . ; Erin, my current wife, though we’re separated, who has found solace in my brother’s letters (and, apparently, his arms for a night) after, I think it’s fairly obvious, some past trauma ripped us apart; Michael, who lied about getting out of prison that morning and previously asked me to look after a bag containing $267,000 cash; the resort owner, Juliette, roadside assist and concierge in one; Officer Darius Crawford, a cop who’s so far out of his depth he might have just come out the other side in China and started to float again; and me, shunted from the family and stuck with a bag of blood money. That’s the cast. I think we well qualify as the required reprobates.