For November, the Solve the Murder Book Club chose The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict. It is available from Amazon and City Adventurers Solve The Murder
The Plot
Lily Armitage never intended to return to Endgame House – the grand family home where her mother died twenty-one Christmases ago. Until she receives a letter from her aunt, asking her to return to take part in an annual tradition: the Christmas Game. The challenge? Solve twelve clues, to find twelve keys. The prize? The deeds to the manor house.
Lily has no desire to win the house. But her aunt makes one more promise: The clues will also reveal who really killed Lily’s mother all those years ago.
So, for the twelve days of Christmas, Lily must stay at Endgame House with her estranged cousins and unravel the riddles that hold the key not just to the family home, but to its darkest secrets. However, it soon becomes clear that her cousins all have their own reasons for wanting to win the house – and not all of them are playing fair.
As a snowstorm cuts them off from the village, the game turns deadly. Soon Lily realises that she is no longer fighting for an inheritance, but for her life. This Christmas is to die for . . . Let the game begin
Review
I had a job getting into this book. The characters didn’t grab me and the use of similes got tedious very quickly. Or as Blackadder might say “as tedious as listening to a bishop drone on about the finer points of ecclesiastical law. So dreadfully dull, mind-numbingly boring, a veritable snore-fest, enough to make a man want to gnaw off his own ears.”
I thought it must be a book by a new writer, showing everything they had learnt at creative writing class. I was wrong. In fact Alexandra Benedict is an award winning writer and has two other Christmas inspired novels available.[Murder On The Christmas Express and The Christmas Jigsaw Murders]
However, to give a proper review, I started reading this again on holiday. While the beginning was still boring, once Lily arrives at Endgame House and her cousins start to arrive the story picks up.
Having said that I did have to refer back to the beginning chapters a few times as there seemed to be a bit of a plot hole. Lily’s mother died in the Endgame House maze twenty-one Christmases ago. That according to the family tree was in 2001. Lily’s aunt Liliana made her leave the house immediately. (Before or after the funeral is a little unclear.) Lily’s Uncle Edward and his wife, aunt Veronica, lived there until they died in an accident in 2002. So the house has been un-lived in for 20 years but everything was as they left it 21 years ago. Clothes in the wardrobes, personal items in the bedrooms. Why did no-one think to clear the house before now? Who, if anyone, loved there in this time? Who maintained the upkeep of the property? This puzzle was never resolved.
“Twelve clues. Twelve keys.” it says in the marketing so I expected a 12 day puzzle book. Instead the puzzles are all cryptic clues from Lily’s aunt alluding to where the 12 keys are hidden. Although the clues are meant to be for everyone, they have been skewed so that they relate to Lily and her mother. This means they can be decoded by Lily easier than her opponents, and certainly easier than by the reader.
As the games progresses, secrets are revealed….or not. It seems whenever someone has something they urgently need to tell her, they announce they will tell her later…..and then they are killed! Just like her mother was all those years ago.
As they family start being bumped off the remaining members carry on with the game. The thought that one (or more) of them is committing familicide does not slow them down. They just stack up the bodies and carry on……
Part way through reading the story I noticed there were puzzles scattered throughout the book. the author had included 12 days of anagrams. I found them too difficult to spot while reading. She had also included titles from her favorite country house mysteries set at Christmas. These were easier to spot. For example, someone would announce something that was inappropriate and that would turn to to be a book title. These puzzles did not enhance the reading, so it was easier to ignore them.
I did guess the guilty party so the final reveal was not a bit surprise.
An OK Christmas read, but I won’t be rushing to read the other ones.
The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict is available from Amazon and City Adventurers Solve The Murder.
Murder On The Christmas Express and The Christmas Jigsaw Murders are also available
The City Adventurers love reading about mystery, so we’ve started our own book club.