The Christmas Jigsaw Murders

Puzzledunnit

The Christmas
Jigsaw Murders
by Alexandra Benedict
Simon and Schuster
ISBN 9781398525375

Eagle eyed readers of the regular kind will probably notice that this is the second ‘December tome’ that I’ve read this year by Alexandra Benedict. The first was Murder On The Christmas Express (reviewed here a couple of days ago) and I was delighted to find a second Christmas themed novel by her out for this Christmas... The Christmas Jigsaw Murders. However, I got it wrong again. Near the start of this story, the main protagonist mentions that something wasn’t quite sitting right about a murder story in the news...  that murder story being the one detailed in Murder On The Christmas Express. All well and good, a shared universe is a nice thing and means characters can cross over in later novels... but then I remembered that a similar comment was made about a murder in the news by another character in the previous book and, sure enough, when I checked, this is actually the third Christmas murder story that Benedict has written, the train set story being the second. So, next year for my December reading, I’m hoping to still be able to pick up her first in this loose trilogy, The Christmas Murder Game (if there are still hardback editions to be had) and, who knows, perhaps she’ll have written a fourth by then.

This one concentrates on a story concerning main protagonist Edie O’ Sullivan, an 80 year old ex-teacher and crossword setter for a local newspaper. And when I first read this on the synopsis of the book on Amazon, I assumed that this would be the writer’s homage to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories but, no Edie is absolutely nothing like Miss Marple, although she clearly possesses a sharp mind, for sure. If anything, I’d say there’s more than a little of Ebenezer Scrooge in her and, I’m possibly reading too much into it but, I think their are a few vague connections to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in this one.

That being said, Edie is a completely sympathetic character who just happens to hate Christmas and most people... and there’s nothing wrong with that (although, personally, I started to embrace Christmas myself, when I was older and had enough money in my pockets to be able to buy people presents). The story involves a series of murders in the town of Weymouth, which seem to be personally targeted at Edie from a person in her past. A person who is posting puzzle pieces from murder scenes as clues, in brown envelopes, through her door as a challenge to stop each murder before it happens. A challenge Edie takes seriously since the endgame, if she is figuring out the puzzle pieces properly, seems to be the death of her nephew Sean, a detective in the local constabulary who has warned her off from working the case in her own way and to leave it to the police.

But, of course, if she did that, then there would be no exciting story to read about. Now, I have to say, after the excellent Murder On The Christmas Express, I wasn’t expecting this one to give it much more than a good run for its money in pacing and addictive reading. I mean, murder mysteries set in railway sleeping cars is always a great setting so to expect something even more unputdownable from the writer would be, I felt, an unfair expectation. But, as it happens, The Christmas Jigsaw Murders is actually even better than the prior Christmas flavoured tome and I found myself feeling for the central characters even more than in the last one. And, I actually didn’t figure out who the murderer was either (although in that particular part of the game, I did feel it would have been impossible to do that, once I knew the solution). So it kept me guessing (which is almost impossible these days) and it also had a couple of surprises in terms of what happens to the main character before the novel had finished... which was cool.

Once again, the writer’s obvious penchant for puzzle solving has been highlighted in the book in a similar manner to the prior tome. For instance, one challenge she issues is to solve hidden anagrams of Dickens novels, thrown randomly in to the book. Another is to name hidden songs in the text... in the prior volume it was Kate Bush songs and, this time, it’s the turn of Fleetwood Mac (not a band I’m familiar with, in all honesty but, my cousin would love it). Finally, there’s a prize to claim as well, for the first person to unscramble all the letters, one given in a puzzle piece heading for each chapter, to reveal a Christmas song... so that’s nice.

I do have one slight criticism with the book and, I’m more than happy to overlook it as a mistake made by one of the characters as a deliberate character embellishment by the writer, rather than suggest she was at fault herself. In one scene there is a reference to a 1940s film noir one of the characters watched which featured a briefcase with unseen insides which glowed. Now, I can only assume this is a less than veiled reference to the Mickey Spillane movie Kiss Me Deadly. If so, it’s not a forties noir... the movie was released in 1955.

Other than that, though, I would have to say that The Christmas Jigsaw Murders is one of the most enjoyable and pacey December reads I’ve been through in some time and have nothing but good words for anyone wishing to read either this wonderful volume or the prior one. As I said, I intend to return to the Christmas writings of Alexandra Benedict next December, for sure.