Death has been laid on top of death. This house is a stacked grave.
The Christmas Murder Game
by Alexandra Benedict
Genre: Mystery
About: Lily hasn't returned to the family estate in decades. Not since she found her mother dead on Boxing day as a child. But after she receives a letter from her recently deceased aunt, imploring her to return home to play the annual Christmas game, she gives in. Only the clues aren't leading to presents this year, they're leading to the past and all its murky secrets. Someone in her family may be a killer, and the game soon turns deadly.
The Good
Puzzles. Are. Fun. I love murder mysteries for the puzzle they make of the characters but this one has both that and actual real puzzles hidden away in the prose. I loved searching for the anagrams, I enjoyed each of the poem clues and, well to be honest I forgot about the hidden book titles, but that's another fun element for readers too. This is a book written for puzzle lovers and it holds interest as there are quite a few murders, guarantees of more clues and anagrams with each new section, and the classic cluedo-like setting to pull you in.
The Bad
The prose is a little clunky, perhaps because of the anagram situation and the weird need to add in Christmas references. I did not enjoy a lot of the similes and metaphors, such as 'It's so quiet you could hear tinsel drop' or 'that one lands like Santa falling down the chimney'. The worst might have been: 'An image of her mum making pastry for mince pies smacks into Lily's head like a robin into a plate of glass'. They felt forced, and probably were. I also found it so bizarre the amount of references we get of corsets. It's contemporary, not historical fiction. I mean I get that Lily makes historical costumes for a living, but I don't get why she needs to wear a corset/gown everyday that was very weird to read. And even if that was her choice for body conscious issues, the amount of times I read the word corset in this novel was so noticeable it could have been a drinking game.
The Somewhat Iffy
The mystery to the past was not very satisfying. Lily's mother was killed over a board decision vote? One that Liliana was the main opponent to but sure, Mariana is the one that's murdered? The idea that Liliana couldn't tell Lily this truth was also a little unbelievable. All these clues to reveal a dead uncle and aunt were behind her mother's death? It just felt very unnecessary to have kept this a secret when the uncle and aunt have been dead for so long by this point.
As for the here and now mystery, I was fine with the who-dunnit reveal, except for a few of their kills. I just didn't get how Sara could have accepted Tom murdering her brother, and also would have appreciated more context on how Tom so casually killed his own brother. Phillipa's murder made sense based on what she saw, but what did Ronnie do or know that was necessary to kill him over? The suggestion was that he was going to help Lily with answers to the past (i.e. her mother's death), but why did Tom or Sara care if Lily knew about Uncle Robert being a murderer? And why wouldn't Tom have killed Lily the moment he discovered she was pregnant with the legal heir to the house if his whole motivation was to be the owner?
Overall
It's fun if you think of it as a game more than a story. I couldn't take it too seriously because there were too many ridiculous elements and it read a little cheesy. A great book for a puzzle lover but as a murder mystery, it left a few things to be desired.
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